Bursa Mayor Mustafa Bozbey has been taken into custody in Turkey regarding a case involving corruption and unlawful construction

Bursa Mayor Mustafa Bozbey has been taken into custody in Turkey regarding a case involving corruption and unlawful construction

Bursa Mayor Mustafa Bozbey and 54 others were detained Tuesday in a sweeping corruption probe, a move the opposition condemned as politically motivated.

Turkish authorities detained Bursa Metropolitan Mayor Mustafa Bozbey Tuesday along with 54 other suspects in coordinated raids across five provinces, escalating pressure on opposition-run municipalities and setting off an immediate political fight in one of the country’s biggest industrial centers. Prosecutors said 59 people were targeted in the operation and that four suspects remained at large.

The Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said the case centers on Bozbey’s earlier years as mayor of Nilüfer, a district within Bursa. According to the prosecutor’s account, investigators concluded that Bozbey, former Nilüfer Mayor Turgay Erdem and some municipal employees arranged improper construction-related floor-area increases in exchange for bribes, generating financial benefits for themselves and for project owners.

The allegations include forming and leading a criminal organization, membership in a criminal organization, bribery, laundering criminal proceeds and causing zoning pollution. Searches were carried out at dozens of homes, companies and other addresses linked to the suspects.

Bozbey won Bursa’s mayoralty in the March 31, 2024 local elections, giving the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, control of Turkey’s fourth-largest city.

Tuesday’s detention therefore landed as both a criminal case and a political shock. Turkish outlet T24 reported that attention quickly turned to the balance of power in the Bursa municipal council and to who could control the city if Bozbey is formally suspended, as often happens in such cases.

Opposition politicians responded by framing the operation as selective justice rather than a neutral anti-corruption drive. CHP Deputy Chair Gökhan Günaydın, writing on X, asked: “Is there an AKP mayor raided at dawn?” Gazete Oksijen and other Turkish outlets also quoted party officials calling the detention a “political operation.”

CHP Deputy Chair Gökan Zeybek went further, saying the government was trying to obtain “through the judiciary” what it had not won at the ballot box.

Another party statement said, in effect, that the authorities were targeting the will of Bursa’s voters rather than simply investigating old municipal decisions.