Now that Ekrem İmamoğlu has been formally charged and he has been stripped – temporarily, we are told – of his Istanbul mayoralty, what happens next?

A thread 🧵 The court decided to uphold İmamoğlu's arrest and detain him pending trial on the first set of charges – those containing allegations of fraud and corruption.

It means the suspended mayor of Istanbul will remain in prison for the foreseeable future.

These local elections will go down in Turkish political lore as an historic turning point for two simple reasons:

🟠President Erdoğan's AK Party has suffered the worst defeats of its 22-year existence,
🔴The opposition CHP has surpassed even its own expectations

🧵to follow👇 The reason it is a defeat for the AK Party is quite plain: it was President Erdoğan who set the parameters of this election by saying nothing short of winning back control of Turkey's biggest cities would be acceptable.

Those conditions were not met.

Despite last weekend's election defeat, the umpteenth of his career as CHP leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu remains in post – yet things are in motion in Turkey's largest political party.

It is plausible, but by no means certain, that he's on his way out.

Here's how. Leadership elections are rare in Turkish political parties because so many of them are built around the leader themselves – so when the leader goes, the party tends to fall apart.

The CHP is a big exception. As Turkey's oldest party, its institutions are deeply rooted.

For the Turkish overseas election, round 2:

It looks like the number of voting days have been REDUCED in countries that backed Kılıçdaroğlu in round 1: Britain, Ireland, Canada, the US.

But NOT Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium – which voted Erdoğan.

It's a bit fishy 🧵👇 Take 🇬🇧Britain. The YSK – Turkey's Supreme Election Council – announced last month that if a second round in the presidential election were needed, ballot boxes would be set up in London, Edinburgh, Manchester & Leicester.

Voting would be 20-24 May, it said.

It's now 20-21 May.

The CHP leader's reply to Meral Akşener's walkout is a fairly pithy message of unity – you can even see it in how the shot is framed and how Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu gesticulates.

No mention Akşener by name, but he suggests that it's an opportunity to broaden his coalition further.

https://twitter.com/kilicdarogluk/status/1631684714619715585

Indirect references to Akşener abound in this short video, though.

"The other members of our alliance do not appear on the media to make insults," he says at one stage.

He uses the word sofra – "dinner table", as opposed to a table for negotiation – at least a dozen times.

A dramatic split in the Turkish opposition today: Meral Akşener takes her Good (İYİ) Party out of the Nation Alliance.

She says they cannot support CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as a unity candidate for president because the public think he won't win. Akşener says the six opposition leaders – who've spent the last two years honing a strategy for a post-Erdoğan Turkey – are no longer working as a collective mind, but as a rubber-stamping operation.

She says her party cannot accept a Kılıçdaroğlu candidacy being forced upon it.

A moment of Turkish political history: the leaders of six opposition parties, all representing different traditions and voter bases, have tonight pledged to work together to abolish the executive presidency system introduced by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AK Party.

https://twitter.com/hbasriakdemir/status/1492615575117475842

It is place will come an 'Enhanced Parliamentary System', a term that has been bandied around by the parties individual for months. It involves stripping the presidency of its powers and reviving cabinet government and the post of prime minister — but the detail isn't there yet.

And we’re off with the first TV debate between two major Turkish political candidates in 17 years - Ekrem İmamoğlu and Binali Yıldırım, candidates for Mayor of Istanbul, are speaking now. "Why are we, the people of İstanbul, having to vote again?" is the first question posed to the two candidates. Binali Yıldırım says votes were stolen from him. Ekrem İmamoğlu has brought out the props to argue his case.