13 individuals, including municipal officials, were detained early Tuesday morning (September 23) in an operation targeting the opposition-held Ankara municipality.

The investigation targeting the municipality concerns a series of municipality-organized concerts hosted in the Turkish capital from 2021-2024. Ankara has been under opposition control since local elections in 2019.

Despite a tightening crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in recent months, Ankara has largely been spared from large-scale arrests and investigations. Some have attributed this to the nationalist political background of some of the CHP’s upper echelon in Ankara. Mayor Mansur Yavaş was a longtime member of the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) before joining the CHP in 2013. The MHP has been the primary coalition partner of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since........

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