Imamoglu's response to Erdogan from Silivri: 'They arrested me, now they are looking for radishes'

As debates grow in the public eye and on the political stage following the arrest of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, messages coming from the prison are also creating an agenda. Imamoglu gave a striking response from prison to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's statement, "The biggest radish in the bag has yet to come out."

Journalist and former MP Mustafa Balbay, who visited Imamoglu at the Marmara Prison in Silivri, shared his impressions of the meeting in his column in the Cumhuriyet newspaper. According to Balbay, Imamoglu argued that the investigations were baseless and that crimes were being fabricated from his mayoral activities, saying, "They arrested me, now they are looking for radishes."

"I AM MANAGING A MUNICIPALITY, NOT A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION"

In the message Imamoglu gave to Balbay, he emphasized that the accusations against him were groundless. Imamoglu noted that all the municipal activities he carried out were for the public good, but that ordinary administrative decisions were being criminalized in an attempt to create a criminal organization.

WHAT DID ERDOGAN SAY?

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his statements following the arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu, reiterated the "biggest radish in the bag" analogy he had frequently used before. Erdogan had used the following expressions regarding the subject:

"When the big radishes in the bag are spilled out, they will not even have the face to look at their own relatives, let alone the nation."