The detention of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul's mayor and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's most formidable rival, on March 19th sparked the largest demonstrations in Turkey in years. Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets, expressing their discontent with the government and demanding the release of the city's imprisoned mayor, who is the Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate for the 2028 Turkish presidential election. According to Reuters, nearly 1,900 people have been arrested.

İmamoğlu’s jailing marks another significant moment in Turkey’s shift toward authoritarianism—an ongoing process that arguably began in 2010 with a constitutional referendum that granted President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies control over the judiciary. In recent years, hundreds of activists, journalists, politicians, and municipal officials have been imprisoned. Shahram Aghamir spoke with UC Berkeley sociologist Cihan Tugal and started by asking him how this consolidation power took place in Turkey.

Jacobin: The Unlikely Resistance in Turkey

Toxic Supply Chains of War in Iraq by VOMENA Team at KPFA

Bassam Haddad is an associate professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and coeditor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021).

Haddad is cofounder/editor of Jadaliyya ezine and executive director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as founding editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is coproducer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism.

Sami Hermez, PhD, is director of the Liberal Arts Program and associate professor in residence of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. He obtained his doctorate degree from the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the author of War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (UPenn 2017), which focuses on the everyday life of political violence in Lebanon and how people recollect and anticipate this violence, and My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine (Stanford 2024), that tells the story of a Palestinian family resisting ongoing Israeli settler colonialism.

Yanis Varoufakis on unbridled capitalism's descent into fascism and genocide by VOMENA Team at KPFA

Journalists risking their lives to report on Gaza & companies and countries supplying oil to Israel by VOMENA Team at KPFA

https://jacobin.com/author/branko-marcetic

Artists demanding an end to Gaza genocide by VOMENA Team at KPFA

Standing in the Dust – Photography of Yalda Moaiery by VOMENA Team at KPFA

The Role of International Actors In The War in Sudan by VOMENA Team at KPFA

On this edition of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, we speak with Dr. Eli Cahan about why Arab and Muslim Americans face significantly higher rates of mental illness.