"We will not allow public order to be violated. We will not give in to vandalism or street terrorism. I will not tolerate threats to public order and peace. We will not allow terror on the streets."
These are not the words of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić about the protests in Serbia, but his Turkish colleague Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the demonstrations in Turkey. With very similar rhetoric with which Vučić comments on the protests in Serbia, Erdogan reacts to the protests in Turkey, which broke out due to the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu.
"The state will ensure peace, but will not tolerate violence," said Vučić, just a few days before March 15 and the largest protest in the history of Serbia.
Pointless debates and a handful of people
"We don't have time to waste on pointless debates, nor heaps of money to waste recklessly," Erdogan said after Imamogu was arrested.
He also added that the issues raised by the opposition "are not the country's issues, but the issues of a handful of opportunists in their central offices", emphasized Erdogan.
"We have no time to waste on the theatrics of the opposition," said the President of Turkey.
So the government arrested over 1000 demonstrators.
Aleksandar Vučić described the disaffected in Serbia in a similar way years ago, and through the state tabloids, the phrase about "a handful of people harassing the whole country" is already an established narrative.
Both "brothers of autocrats" talk about traitors and foreign mercenaries, about the "terror of the minority over the majority", about foreign power centers that broker in their countries only to remove the honest ones who will not bow their heads from power.
Both in countries that are corrupt to the core say that their political opponents want to come to power only to loot the country, they accuse them of terrorism.
Both presidents use similar strategies to repress the media and civil society, and they have more and more control in their hands.
What happened
Imamoglu is in custody on charges of allegedly running a criminal organization and corruption.
He is the main political rival of Turkish President Erdogan, and the opposition should choose its presidential candidate in the next elections in a few days.
Thousands of people are protesting in Istanbul because of his arrest, despite the ban on demonstrations in the city, AP reported.
He was arrested on March 19, as part of an investigation into alleged cases of "corruption and terrorism." The warrant does not relate to a separate investigation into Imamoglu's alleged aid to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK), which Turkey considers terrorist organizations.
This decision caused great dissatisfaction among the opposition, after which protests against the decision were held in Istanbul and other cities.
The mayor of the Turkish capital, Ankara, Mansur Javas, also participated in them, who called on the opposition forces to unite against "injustice".
The government also used water cannons to disperse demonstrations in the capital Ankara and the Aegean city of 1 million, Izmir.
The arrest of Imamoglu is considered an attempt to politically remove the popular oppositionist and the most serious challenger to Erdogan in the upcoming presidential elections.
The opposition condemned the arrest, so Musk shut down their accounts
The opposition condemned the arrest as an attempt to stifle the opposition and undermine democratic rights.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said that regardless of the university's decision to cancel the degree, the party would name Imamoglu as its presidential candidate on March 23 for the 2028 election.
During that time, Musk's Platform X suspended opposition accounts in Turkey, writes the Brussels "Politico".
This is not the first time that X acts restrictively in Turkey. Logically, the question arises whether something like that could have happened in Serbia.
