Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongest rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, is facing the risk of life in prison, after a prosecutor requested a sentence of more than 2,000 years for the Istanbul mayor.
The unprecedented request escalates a legal battle for one of Turkey’s most prominent opposition figures and raises the prospect that he will be barred from running in the next presidential election — potentially sidelining him from active politics altogether.