Soon after Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul in the mid-1990s, he visited a meatball restaurant in the city’s Gungoren district.

The restaurant’s manager, a man called Ekrem Imamoglu, years later explained that he had not charged the new mayor.

“When he was in his first months as mayor I hosted him,” recalled Mr Imamoglu. “He ate meatballs in my restaurant. I didn’t take his money. He won’t pay that bill as long as he lives.”

In the years that followed, Mr Erdogan rose from mayor to president, reshaping Turkey more than any leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Following in Erdogan’s footsteps to the mayoralty, and emerging in recent years as his chief political rival, is the same affable restaurant manager from all those years ago.

This week, their rivalry erupted into Turkey’s largest street protests in more than a decade after Mr Imamoglu was arrested and jailed. His supporters argue this was a political move by Mr Erdogan to keep him out of elections.