Özgür Özel was everywhere. On Wednesday, April 9, in front of several tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Istanbul's Sisli Town Hall Square to rally against the incarceration on March 19 of the city's mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, he struck, with verbal cold efficiency, against the authoritarian and repressive tendencies of the Turkish government.

With his hoarse and powerful voice, Özel, the leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP, social-democratic), accused the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of being part of a "junta" that conducted a "coup d'état" by arresting his main adversary. The next day, Thursday, at a ceremony in Ankara, he condemned a justice system at the government's beck and call, which had just arrested, that very morning, investigative journalist Timur Soykan, to whom he was supposed to present an award for his investigations. Just the previous Sunday, having been reelected by a landslide to lead the CHP, the country's main opposition force, he called for early elections and threw a defiant challenge to the head of state: "If you have the courage, stand before us!"

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