Thirteen people, including current and former officials of the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, found themselves under police custody on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, as Turkish prosecutors deepened a corruption investigation into the city’s spending on concerts and cultural events. The probe, which has already stirred considerable political tension, targets the capital’s municipality run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and comes amid a wider sweep of legal actions against opposition-held local governments following last year’s fiercely contested local elections.
According to the Ankara Chief Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation centers on 32 cultural events organized between 2021 and 2024, which allegedly resulted in a public loss of about 154 million lira—roughly $3.7 million at current exchange rates. The statement, reported by Turkish Minute and corroborated by multiple sources, explained that the suspects were detained on allegations of misconduct and bid rigging. These allegations, prosecutors say, are supported by findings from the Interior Ministry, the Financial Crimes Investigation Board, and the Court of Accounts, the country’s top financial watchdog.
The sweep included not only former and current directors of the municipality’s culture department but also executives from private companies contracted to organize the events. Police operations, officials noted, were still ongoing as of Tuesday evening. The municipality’s accounts and practices, it turns out, have been under intense scrutiny since the CHP’s historic victory in the 2024 local elections, which saw the party wrest control of several major cities from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
In a statement released the same day, the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality sharply criticized the raids, arguing that city officials could have been invited to provide testimony voluntarily rather than being detained. The municipality insisted its accounts are regularly reviewed by the Court of Accounts and that no irregularities had ever been found. The statement also emphasized that the largest share of concert costs stemmed from stage construction and sound systems, not from artists’ fees, and suggested that price comparisons with other large-scale events would be needed to determine if any financial loss had truly occurred.
To put the spending in perspective, the municipality contrasted its own record with that of the previous city administration, which was under AKP rule. Between 2014 and 2019, the city spent $33 million on 80 events, while from 2019 until October 2024, the CHP-led municipality spent $30 million on a staggering 426 events—an increase in cultural programming but a lower average cost per event. The implication was clear: the current administration claims to have delivered more for less, at least on paper.
Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, who secured re-election in March 2025 with more than 60 percent of the vote and is widely seen as a potential challenger to Erdoğan in the 2028 presidential race, came out strongly in defense of his administration. Speaking to journalist Ünsal Ünlü, Yavaş said that earlier inspections by state auditors had found no financial loss, adding, “Now they are trying to take it in a completely different direction by bringing in claims of bid rigging.” His comments, reported by Turkish Minute, reflect a growing sense among opposition figures that the case is as much about political maneuvering as it is about financial accountability.
The timing of the raids has only fueled speculation about political interference. Just hours before the police operation, former Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek—a longtime AKP figure who led the city from 1994 to 2017—posted on X (formerly Twitter) that a “billion-lira fraud” was about to erupt in the capital. The post, which seemed to foreshadow the operation, raised eyebrows among CHP lawmakers. Gökhan Günaydın, the party’s parliamentary group deputy chair, accused those responsible for past corruption of having advance knowledge of the raid, while current municipal officials were being unfairly targeted. “Ankara had been ‘sold piece by piece for a quarter century’ under earlier administrations, yet no investigations were launched before 2019,” Günaydın said, as quoted by Turkish Minute. He added pointedly, “Hands off the municipality.”
Gökçek himself has long faced opposition accusations of corruption and misconduct during his tenure, though none of those claims were ever formally investigated. The contrast between the treatment of past and current officials has not gone unnoticed by political observers, who see the latest probe as part of a broader pattern of legal pressure on opposition-led municipalities since the CHP’s electoral surge.
CHP lawmaker Mahmut Tanal, representing Şanlıurfa, went a step further, arguing that the probe violated basic rules of judicial confidentiality. He noted that details of the investigation had appeared on social media hours before any official statement was made, calling it evidence that judicial information was being leaked and weaponized as political propaganda. “This is a blow to impartiality,” Tanal said, emphasizing that in a true state of law, judicial decisions should be handed down by the courts—not by politicians or through public leaks.
The Ankara municipality’s statement also argued that the case was being deliberately portrayed in the media as an “operation against Ankara city hall,” a framing they say is intended to undermine public confidence in the opposition’s ability to govern. The statement insisted that the city’s financial affairs were transparent and open to scrutiny, and that all contracts and expenditures were subject to regular review by the Court of Accounts, which had never flagged any significant irregularities.
This latest investigation comes on the heels of a series of legal cases targeting opposition-led city governments across Turkey, a trend that accelerated after the 2024 local elections. Since then, the CHP’s victories in major urban centers have prompted what many in the party describe as a “judicial offensive” by the central government and its allies. The atmosphere has grown increasingly charged, with both sides trading accusations of corruption, political bias, and abuse of power.
For many residents of Ankara, the spectacle of high-profile detentions and public accusations has become all too familiar. Some see the probe as a necessary step to ensure accountability in public spending, while others view it as a calculated move to weaken the opposition ahead of future national elections. The truth, as is often the case in Turkish politics, may lie somewhere in between.
As police operations continue and the legal process unfolds, the fate of the detained officials—and the reputation of Ankara’s city hall—hangs in the balance. With the stakes so high and the political climate so fraught, all eyes will be on the courts to see whether the charges stick or if, as the opposition claims, this is just the latest salvo in Turkey’s ongoing political battles.
