On Wednesday Turkish authorities detained Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongest political rival, a move that follows a wider crackdown on opposition figures over the past months. Imamoglu, who was preparing to assume the presidency of the CHP, the main opposition party, has said he will not back down. Henri Barkey, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Cohen chair in international relations at Lehigh University, joins Thanos Davelis to look into Imamoglu’s arrest, a move many see as bringing Turkey closer to endless Erdogan rule.

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