Turkey’s Uskudar Purge Exposes Erdogan’s Selective Justice -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

The Turkish police on July 29, 2026 detained twenty three municipal officials in two back to back anti graft sweeps in Istanbul’s Uskudar district and in Usak province repeating the pattern where with uncanny precision, nearly every major corruption probe lands on mayors from the opposition CHP.

Who was accused is just as important as the alleged crime. The top name among those detained is Sinem Dedetas, Uskudar’s first female mayor, who unseated the AKP to represent a district that includes President Erdogan’s family home in March 2024. Together with her deputy mayor, chief of staff, an architect, a business fixer and a contractor she was arrested during operation and 17 officials were rounded up in Usak in a separate operation.

The allegations are specific. Prosecutors claim the Uskudar group made developers sign fake “consultancy” contracts with a municipal subsidiary, Kent A.S., totaling 1.08 billion lira of which 361.4 million lira had so far been paid ($7.6 million), as a condition for building and occupancy permits. In Usak, alleged the Registration of phantom staff in a subsidiary of the municipality to pocket social-security funds $360,000 (16.86m lira) stolen from public money.

The raids were synchronized for maximum impact: on the morning of July 29, police raided all parts of the Istanbul in simultaneous raids encompassing 11 addresses to seize digital devices while Usak’s prosecutor’s office carried out their own synchronized detentions on the same day.

The question which Ankara would prefer that no one asks is how long. In the paper this is just routine policing. In reality it is the newest stage in a campaign that has broadly absorbed numerous CHP mayors including suspended Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu other than for AKP run municipalities which face similar charges to be taken down and handcuffed. The message is itself the pattern: govern well as an opposition politician, and the state will find a way to eliminate you.

The method is the deadly part: clean, and in a procedural way; that is where the trouble lies. The Turkish judiciary courts the executive since a 2017 constitutional referendum, using legitimate anti-corruption against opponents but without technically breaching due process. Financial trails by MASAK, testimony from cooperating witnesses, and warrants issued by the courts are all good in their own right. Yet the timing, selectivity and target profile always CHP (Republican People’s Party), always Erdogan’s most significant political opponents expose the political rationality in disguise of a legal shield.

There is real municipal corruption and it needs to be prosecuted without regard to party. However, selective justice is not justice, it is intimidation cloaked in due process. Three strategic steps are urgent. To start with, the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe needs to prioritize a review of detention patterns that disproportionately affect one side, analyzing comparative caseload data as evidence of systemic bias rather than coincidence. Second, international election monitors should record this crackdown now before the 2028 municipal elections so its chilling effect on opposition candidacies is not whitewashed away. Third, both Turkish bar associations and civil society will need to advocate for prosecutorial independence free of executive appointment powers, the only long-term solution to a judiciary serving political purposes. Without reform, every anti corruption headline out of Ankara will continue to read, accurately, as a political indictment of Turkish democracy itself.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia