On the 71st hearing day of the İBB Case, involving 414 defendants, 53 of whom are detained, including Ekrem İmamoğlu, the court is hearing the defenses of the defendants who are not in detention. The presiding judge announced that the detained defendants’ requests for release would be heard next week and that the defendants or their lawyers would be given half an hour each. According to the schedule, İmamoğlu’s request for release is expected to be heard on Thursday, September 3.
Adnan Çebi, chairman of the board of Makyol, who presented his defense at the hearing, said he had no connection to the entities mentioned in the indictment and that they had not received any work from İBB during İmamoğlu’s tenure. Çebi said they had also liquidated the two projects, worth approximately 1.5 billion dollars, that they had undertaken during Kadir Topbaş’s tenure, and denied the accusation of “aiding the organization.”
Çebi said they owned the Le Méridien Hotel but that it was operated by the Marriott group, arguing that Makyol had no authority over the hotel’s management or operations. He also said that he had not attended any of the meetings in which Ekrem İmamoğlu had participated.
Why it matters
This stage of the case is changing the direction of the proceedings by marking the transition from the individual defenses of the defendants who are not in detention to the consideration of the detained defendants’ requests for release. The half-hour period granted to defendants and their lawyers means that the grounds for release will be presented within a specific time limit at next week’s hearings. Adnan Çebi’s defense, meanwhile, is based on the assertion that there is no link between himself or his company and the entities mentioned in the accusations, the work obtained from the municipality, or the hotel’s activities. This account places at the center of the defense the distinction between past municipal projects and the İmamoğlu era, as well as the difference between ownership of the hotel and authority over its operation. How the court will assess these objections and the requests for release remains the key unresolved issue.