Turkey—Will the Convergence of Oppositions Go Beyond Nationalism?

On 19 March 2025, the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, mayor of Istanbul and political opponent, triggered a wave of protest in Turkey. His imprisonment is seen as an attempt to stifle the nascent alliance between the CHP, the opposition party, and the Kurdish movement. This is part of a strategy of increased state repression, despite an apparent opening towards a peace process with the PKK, recently announced by Abdullah Öcalan. The authorities oscillate between talk of appeasement and increased violence. Yet this repression has encouraged the emergence of unprecedented alliances between feminist, Kurdish, Armenian, LGBT+ and environmental movements. These social convergences structure a plural opposition, rooted in the struggles and difficult to quell. The Gezi experience remains a symbolic matrix for this resistance. The government, worried about this rising momentum, is trying to contain it without fully succeeding.