Erdogan says no role in Istanbul mayor conviction

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he had “nothing to do” with the jailing of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor — an outcome set to prevent the latter from standing in next June’s presidential election.

Ekrem Imamoglu’s sentence following a politically charged defamation trial has caused an international storm.

He was sent down for “insulting a public official” after dubbing city election officials “idiots” during a controversial 2019 mayoral race. But Erdogan insisted he had no hand in the verdict.

“What is behind the storm sparked by a verdict these past few days? This debate has nothing to do with us — neither with me nor with our nation,” Erdogan insisted, in his first comments on the subject since Wednesday’s verdict. “We laugh at all the false words uttered so surely” by those seeing a political manoeuvre in the sentence, he said.