ISTANBUL: Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators rallied Saturday in Istanbul in defense of democracy after the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkiye’s worst street unrest in over a decade.
Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkiye’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid Al-Fitr celebration which starts Sunday, marking the end of Ramadan.
Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition party CHP which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but AFP was unable to independently confirm the figure.
The mass protests, which began with Imamoglu’s March 19 detention on contested fraud and “terror” charges, have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as CHP’s candidate for the 2028 race on the day he was jailed.
As his wife, Dilek, arrived on stage, massive applause arose from the crowd which was a sea of Turkish flags and pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkiye’s founding father.
Imamoglu was resoundingly re-elected mayor for the third time last year. The anger over his arrest which began in Istanbul quickly spread across Turkiye.
Nightly protests outside Istanbul City Hall drew vast crowds and often degenerated into running battles with riot police, who used teargas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters.
“We are here today for our homeland. We, the people, elect our rulers,” insisted 17-year-old Melis Basak Ergun, a young protester who vowed they would never be cowed “by violence or tear gas.”
“We stand behind our mayor, Imamoglu.”
Turkish authorities did not comment on the latest mass protest. Erdogan has previously branded the demonstrations “street terror.”
In a letter read out to the crowd, Imamoglu addressed Turkiye’s youngsters, saying: “If young people are on the front line, it’s because they’re the ones who feel most anxiety about the future.
“The youth are telling Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Show the people respect. Don’t touch the nation’s will. Don’t cheat — compete fairly. But Erdogan is closing his ears to these voices,” he wrote.
“This is not about Ekrem Imamoglu, it’s about our country... It is about justice, democracy and freedom,” he said, as the crowd roared back: “Rights! Law! Justice!“
“Everywhere is Taksim, resistance is everywhere!” they chanted, referring to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square, site of the last massive wave of protests in 2013.
The last major demonstration called by CHP was Tuesday ahead of Saturday’s big rally, although students have continued to protest throughout the week.
Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde, Ozel said there would be weekly rallies every Saturday in different cities across Turkiye as well as a weekly Wednesday night demo in Istanbul.
“If we don’t stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box,” he said.
“I joined the rallies outside City Hall for four days together with university students. I told them not to give in,” protester Cafer Sungur, 78, told AFP.
“There is no other way than to keep fighting,” he said.
“I was jailed in the 1970s but back then there was justice. Today we can’t talk about justice anymore.”
Student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked, in the face of a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.
The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.
Eleven journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.
Swedish journalist Joakim Medin was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP.
Reporters Without Borders’ Turkiye representative Erol Onderoglu said Medin had been charged with “insulting the president” — a charge often use to silence Erdogan’s critics.
“The judicial pressure systematically brought to bear on local journalists for a long time is now being brought to bear on their foreign colleagues,” he told AFP, two days after the deportation of BBC correspondent Mark Lowen.
He said authorities had accused him of being “a threat to public order.”
Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, a legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities “seem to be very determined to limit coverage of the protests.
“We fear the crackdown on the press will not only continue but increase,” she said.

SANHAJA, Tunisia: In a northern Tunisian olive grove, Yassine Khelifi’s small workshop hums as a large machine turns olive waste into a valuable energy source in a country heavily reliant on imported fuel.
Holding a handful of compacted olive residue — a thick paste left over from oil extraction — Khelifi said: “This is what we need today. How can we turn something worthless into wealth?“
For generations, rural households in Tunisia have burned olive waste for cooking and heating, or used it as animal feed.
The International Olive Council estimated Tunisia will be the world’s third-largest olive oil producer in 2024-2025, with an expected yield of 340,000 tons.
The waste generated by the oil extraction is staggering.
Khelifi, an engineer who grew up in a family of farmers, founded Bioheat in 2022 to tackle the issue. He recalled watching workers in olive mills use the olive residue as fuel.
“I always wondered how this material could burn for so long without going out,” he said. “That’s when I asked myself: ‘Why not turn it into energy?’“
Beyond profit, Khelifi hopes his startup helps “reducing the use of firewood as the country faces deforestation and climate change.”
At his workshop, employees transport truckloads of olive waste, stacking it high before feeding it into the processing machines.
The material is then compacted into cylindrical briquettes and left to dry for a month under the sun and in greenhouses before its packaging and sale.
Khelifi began developing his idea in 2018 after he traveled across Europe searching for a machine to turn the olive paste into long-burning fuel.
Unable to find the right technology, he returned to Tunisia and spent four years experimenting with various motors and mechanical parts.
By 2021, he had developed a machine that produced briquettes with just eight-percent moisture.
He said this amount significantly reduces carbon emissions compared to firewood, which requires months of drying and often retains more than double the amount of moisture.
Bioheat found a market among Tunisian restaurants, guesthouses, and schools in underdeveloped regions, where winter temperatures at times drop below freezing.
But the majority of its production — about 60 percent — is set for exports to France and Canada, Khelifi said.
The company now employs 10 people and is targeting production of 600 tons of briquettes in 2025, he added.
Selim Sahli, 40, who runs a guesthouse, said he replaced traditional firewood with Khelifi’s briquettes for heating and cooking.
“It’s an eco-friendly and cost-effective alternative,” he said. “It’s clean, easy to use, and has reduced my heating costs by a third.”
Mohamed Harrar, the owner of a pizza shop on the outskirts of Tunis, praised the briquettes for reducing smoke emissions, which he said previously irritated his neighbors.
“Besides, this waste carries the soul of Tunisian olives and gives the pizza a special flavour,” he added.
Given Tunisia’s significant olive oil production, waste byproducts pose both a challenge and an opportunity.
Noureddine Nasr, an agricultural and rural development expert, said around 600,000 tons of olive waste is produced annually.
“Harnessing this waste can protect the environment, create jobs, and generate wealth,” he said.
Nasr believes repurposing olive waste could also help alleviate Tunisia’s heavy dependence on imported fuel.
The country imports more than 60 percent of its energy needs, a reliance that widens its trade deficit and strains government subsidies, according to a 2023 World Bank report.
Fuel and gas shortages are common during winter, particularly in Tunisia’s northwestern provinces, where households struggle to keep warm.
Redirecting agricultural waste into alternative energy sources could ease this burden.
Yet for entrepreneurs like Khelifi, launching a startup in Tunisia is fraught with challenges.
“The biggest hurdle was funding,” he said, lamenting high-interest bank loans. “It felt like walking on a road full of potholes.”
But now his goal is “to leave my mark as a key player in Tunisia’s transition to clean energy,” he added. “And hopefully, the world’s, too.”