Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main opponent of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested Wednesday morning, along with more than a hundred of his colleagues, elected officials, and members of his party, which denounces a "coup d'état" against the opposition.

Popular and charismatic, the mayor , who is overwhelmed by legal proceedings against him, is accused this time of "corruption" and, according to the official Anadolu agency, of "terrorism."

His arrest caused an immediate fall in the Turkish lira, which reached a record low of 40 pounds to the dollar and 42 pounds to the euro (after having plunged to 44.7 pounds to the euro).

The Istanbul Stock Exchange - whose website is inaccessible - was also forced to temporarily suspend operations after its index fell 6.87%, according to Turkish media, before reopening at 10:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m. GMT).

According to one of his close collaborators, the mayor, who was tipped by his party to be its candidate in the next presidential election, was taken to the police station.

In a video posted on X, the 53-year-old mayor, getting dressed and tying his tie, denounces the search of his home: "Hundreds of police officers arrived at my door. The police burst into my house and knocked on my door. I leave it to my nation," he said.

- Before dawn -

"The police arrived just after suhoor (the meal before dawn during Ramadan, editor's note). Ekrem Bey began to get ready. (...) They left the house around 7:30 a.m.," the mayor's wife, Dilek Imamoglu, testified on the private channel NTV.

According to a statement from the Istanbul prosecutor's office, Imamoglu is accused of bribery and extortion, calling him the head of a "profit-making criminal organization."

The state-run Anadolu Agency also reported accusations of "terrorism" and "aiding the PKK," the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party, against seven suspects, including the mayor.

All gatherings and demonstrations have been banned until Sunday by the governor of Istanbul, but many supporters of the mayor, who had initially planned to gather on Wednesday, were converging on the municipality surrounded by barriers, according to an AFP photographer.

Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square, a traditional hotspot for protests, has also been completely closed, and passers-by are reluctant to speak out, AFP correspondents noted.

"We're in a dictatorship," says a shopkeeper identified only by his first name, Kuzey. "This guy and his dirty gang hate us. As soon as they deal with someone strong, they do something illegal, they panic," he spits about the head of state. "They're devils, but amateurs, we're going to beat them."

The chairman of Mr. Imamgoglu's Republican People's Party (CHP), Özgur Özel, denounced "a coup to obstruct the will of the people" and "against the next president" of Turkey.

- Judicial harassment-

"What happened this morning is nothing less than a coup d'état against the main opposition party, with far-reaching consequences for the country's political future," said Berk Esen, a political scientist at Istanbul's Sabanci University, contacted by AFP. "This decision pushes Turkey further down the path to autocracy, like Venezuela, Russia, and Belarus."

Mr. Imamoglu is the only candidate in the running to represent his party in the next presidential election scheduled for 2028 and was due to be officially nominated on Sunday during a primary within the CHP.

Istanbul University revoked his diploma on Tuesday, adding another obstacle to his potential candidacy: the Constitution requires a higher education degree for any candidacy for the position of head of state.

The mayor had denounced the decision as "illegal" and announced his intention to challenge it in court, believing that the Istanbul university's board of directors was not authorized to act in this way.

"The acquired rights of everyone in this country are threatened," he accused.

A figure of the CHP, the main parliamentary opposition party, Ekrem Imamoglu is the subject of five other legal proceedings, two of which were opened in January.

In 2023, Mr. Imamoglu had already been effectively barred from running for president due to a pending conviction for "insulting" officials of Turkey's electoral committee.

A vehement opponent of President Erdogan, Mr. Imamoglu denounced the "harassment" of him by the justice system in late January. He was leaving an Istanbul court where he was being questioned as part of an investigation opened after criticism of the city's prosecutor general.