CHP Chairman Özgür Özel and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu speak on the detention in Beşiktaş

CHP Chairman Özgür Özel is speaking;

Three hours before sunrise, they went to the residence of Rıza Akpolat, our Beşiktaş Mayor, who received 65 percent of the vote in Beşiktaş and enjoys over 80 percent satisfaction in his district according to surveys. They knocked on the door as if to break it down, they woke up his elderly mother. They said, 'Open it or we will break it down'...

He opened the door, and police officers instructed by unlawful orders asked, 'Where is Rıza?'

His mother said, 'His father is sick, he went to Balıkesir.'

This time they said, 'Let him be taken from his sick father's house,' and they went to Balıkesir...

Rıza Akpolat's location is known, his phone is on...

If they had called and asked him to come, he would have come, but that is not the goal. The goal, through Rıza Akpolat and through Ahmet Özer, is the discomfort felt regarding honest, upright CHP municipal governance.

They treated Rıza Akpolat in a way they did not treat drug barons.

Those who informed journalists about the door he would enter while being taken for a medical examination, and the television channel that was the first to report the detention decision... Look at when the paths of that television channel's owner and that prosecutor crossed, and let all of Turkey see that what is being attempted is not an investigation, but a defamation campaign carried out with instructions given from Ankara, from the very top of the state!

Because they could not find another executioner to behead every opponent wherever an injustice was to be committed, they paraded the same executioner—whom I call the mobile guillotine—from court to court. The same mobile guillotine started this job this morning as well.

We swear that the mobile guillotine and the channel it acts in concert with will be held accountable.

The law is written clearly; a mayor cannot be detained on such an accusation. If that were the case, President Erdoğan would have been detained during his time as mayor.

If such a detention is taking place, it is because that mayor is from the CHP and is causing Erdoğan to lose sleep...

Which AKP Mayor has this been done to! Which AKP Mayor did you do this to, whom you forced to resign with implications of corruption and FETÖ? Even Melih Gökçek is among them, but there is no judiciary to ask a single question!

If they think that when it comes to the CHP, they can start with Esenyurt, continue with Beşiktaş, and move step by step to reach Ekrem İmamoğlu, who has never been defeated in his political life, that task is not that easy.

Ahmet Özer, Rıza Akpolat, and Ekrem İmamoğlu are all true children of this party, and if they think they can defeat them by using the judiciary as a tool because they cannot win politically, by declaring a prosecutor an executioner, they are mistaken; the CHP is behind them, Turkey is behind them!

They want to base the investigation on Esenyurt, but your appointed trustee signed the approval for the tender of the company in question. If you are going to detain someone, you should detain your trustee.

There is no account we will not give; Rıza Akpolat has not fled anywhere. Our place, our home, our party, where we come from, and where we are going are clear...

Not a single person appointed by either Özgür Özel or Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has fled to this day because they have no fear and no accounts they cannot answer for!

But the number of FETÖ members appointed by Tayyip Erdoğan who fled abroad on boats is over 5 thousand... Those you appointed are fugitives in Germany and America... Those you appoint today should not trust you either; sooner or later, just as Zekeriya Öz fled, this incompetent, ambitious person will also look for a hole to hide in.

If you play 50 games while leaving, try to break the wrist you cannot bend, and set up conspiracies, if you enter into calculations to avoid losing or to avoid entering an election, this is how you will go down in history.

Today is not an end or a dark day; today is a day of evil in the political history of the AKP that will be remembered as 'they even stooped to this,' shame belongs to the perpetrator.

Mr. Rıza is a record-holder in Turkey, and all 31 of his municipal council members are from the CHP. This means that we, as the people of Beşiktaş, do not trust the AKP and MHP even as much as a single council seat; it means take your hands off the Beşiktaş municipality.

Beşiktaş will never surrender to this evil, Istanbul and Turkey will not surrender. In the end, goodness will win, beautiful people will win...

Greetings to Istanbul, we are not afraid, we will not bow down, we will not be defeated, the cowards and the evil will lose!

I trust you, I believe in you...

We will win, we will win, we will win!

Ekrem İmamoğlu made the following statements:

A single-person mentality has brought the country to this state; it is this mentality that scares people by conducting dawn raids. It is a move made with the ambition of losing Istanbul and the fear of losing Turkey; there is no other explanation.

This mentality is now conducting a process by unlawfully detaining our dear brother and fellow traveler Rıza Akpolat and involving him in a so-called process. The issue is not Esenyurt or Beşiktaş...

The issue is the strategy of an authoritarian perspective on how to proceed.

This method of detention is outside the law; this is called judicial harassment, this is called the instrumentalization of the judiciary for politics.

Have you seen a dawn operation against any AKP official in 23 years? The Ministry of Interior seizes the files of dozens of corruption cases we have uncovered and audits we have conducted so that no inspection process can take place, but unfortunately, this practice is applied to CHP Mayors while there is only an allegation on the table.

AKP Mayors are pure as driven snow, but CHP Mayors are dirty? Get out of here! Mind your own business!

They are attacking the CHP through this company, which has taken on work from the Court of Cassation, Turkish Airlines, the Trabzon Metropolitan Municipality, and dozens of other public institutions and AKP-run municipalities.

I want to ask the prosecutors: will you request the same thing you did in Beşiktaş and Esenyurt from the other state institutions or AKP-run municipalities I just listed?

They want to distract the nation with these agendas and achieve their goals; no mayor will be intimidated, we will continue to move full speed ahead.

We will continue on our path without separating anyone; there are those trying to fix the bad economy today, but justice does not come to places where such lawlessness exists, capital does not come, unemployment increases, and your reputation in the world goes down...

It is not the time to act cowardly or timidly; we are all hurting, our country's reputation is being damaged, the value of our currency is falling, we are all losing.

Governments exist everywhere, and there is also an opposition within democracies. The government is in an effort to eliminate the opposition, but the CHP is never the party they know. It is a 100-year-old plane tree; have no doubt, we will be strong, we will be vibrant, we will be united against these judicial harassments...

We will give a political response to their political attacks, we will end their dreams of entering an election without rivals, and we will all together erase them from Turkey's history and send them home.

Our struggle is political; let them continue their efforts to use politics and the judiciary as a weapon, we will continue to be one with our nation, we will never be intimidated, we will never be destroyed. Everything will be very beautiful, and we will say full speed ahead...