THE mayor of one of Turkey’s opposition strongholds was arrested today as part of a bid-rigging investigation, prosecutors in Istanbul said.

Riza Akpolat, who heads Besiktas municipality on the city’s European side, was detained at his summer house in Edremit on Turkey’s west coast, news agency DHA reported.

Besiktas has long been under the control of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). It is home to the famous football club of the same name.

“A criminal organisation organised the tender processes by bribing mayors and senior executives of municipalities and ensuring that their own companies were awarded the tenders,” the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

CHP chairman Ozgur Ozel described the arrest as “a new link in the chain of lawlessness in the politicised justice system” and vowed to stand by Mr Akpolat.

The prosecutor’s office said that a three-month investigation led to arrest warrants for 47 people, including Mr Akpolat and Ahmet Ozer, the CHP mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district.

Mr Ozer has been behind bars since October as part of a separate investigation into his alleged connections to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party.

Since opposition parties successfully won control of major cities across Turkey in 2019, local officials, mainly pro-Kurdish party members, have often been arrested and removed from office.