Sunday's events were the first results of a week of events.
IBB Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Şişli Mayor Resul Emre Şahan and Beylikdüzü Mayor Murat Çalık were among the 94 people brought to court. While 50 people, including İmamoğlu, Şahan and Çalık, were arrested, 44 people were released.
The process that led first to the cancellation of İmamoğlu's diploma at the beginning of the week and then to his detention and arrest has once again revealed the "intention" of the one-man regime in Turkey, where it wants to take the country, but in a way that leaves no room for doubt.

The aim of the owners of this "intention" is to create a political system in which the "acceptable opposition" and the "acceptable presidential candidate" are determined by one man, so that this candidate can freely participate in the elections but cannot win!

However, since this imaginary system has not yet been established, despite the significant steps taken to institutionalise the one-man regime, the police, the prosecutors, the biased judiciary, the biased media, the army of trolls... must be put into action.

The barricades in front of the great discontent have been torn down!

This is the 'intention' and purpose of the rulers, but the people of our country do not say so. On the contrary, the events of the last week have already been written down as the most important days of the struggle for freedom and democracy in the history of Turkey.

The resistance that continues with the masses of hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, who take to the streets every day and spread to almost all provinces and districts, especially to Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, goes beyond the protection of Imamoğlu and IBB and flows into the lane of the struggle for freedom and democracy.

The participation of CHP members in Sunday's primary election for İmamoğlu as the CHP's "presidential candidate" was much higher than expected: According to a CHP statement, 1 million 600 thousand out of 1 million 750 thousand CHP members voted in the 'primary ballot boxes', while 13.5 million people voted in the 'solidarity ballot boxes'.

In the popular discourse, the people surpassed all predictions by leaps and bounds and 'exploded the ballot boxes'.

It is clear that the successive lawsuits against İmamoğlu, the cancellation of his diploma, the administrative (trustee) and financial siege of the opposition municipalities, the attempts to appoint a trustee at the last congress of the CHP, the dismissal of the Istanbul Bar Association... Contrary to the expectations of the government, the attempts to neutralise and discredit the CHP and all opposition forces have not only motivated the opposition front to unite and fight together, but have also led to the destruction of the barricades in front of the masses' great dissatisfaction, which is the expression of the masses' dissatisfaction with the government's policies.

Opposition strengthens, not the government's ‘home front’

For this reason, it is very clear that the government's moves to turn the country into a thornless rose garden for itself by crushing the opposition strengthen the opposition, not the government's 'home front'. In the hours when Imamoğlu was taken to Silivri, CHP leader Özgür Özel assessed this situation by saying: "Imamoğlu is on his way to prison and on his way to the presidency!

However, there are no signs that the one-man government will change its course and adopt a line that is in line with the constitution and laws and respects the independence of the judiciary. On the contrary, the government's statements and initiatives show that it will insist on crushing and neutralising the opposition by any means necessary.

Hundreds of thousands of people every day in the big provinces and districts, especially in Istanbul, show that the masses will continue to fill the squares beyond expectations despite the police interventions with gas and water and the arrests through house raids.

In fact, it is remarkable and important that the university students, who seem to have been withdrawn for a long time, are taking the lead in filling the squares.

Students of many universities such as Ege, Dokuz Eylül, Istanbul, Yıldız Technical, Galatasaray and Istanbul Technical University... have decided to boycott against the anti-democratic practices in the country and in their universities. The students of METU are also calling on all universities to boycott.

But also those who could not be in the squares were remarkable. The trade union bureaucracy, especially Türk-İş and Hak-İş, behave as if they live in Patagonia and not in this country because of the holy peace they have made with the government! But among the masses that filled the squares, there were also unionised workers. In fact, voices of 'general strike, general resistance' were raised in the squares. The workers who write to our newspaper are very critical of the attitude of the trade unionists.

In short, although it is still the first days of spring, the squares have started to heat up the country rapidly.

All the signs are that the political heat will rise in the coming days! As long as the forces of democracy play their part!