Jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu declared Opposition's presidential candidate amid mass protests in Turkey

Ekrem Imamoglu - File Photo

Istanbul's embattled Ekrem Imamoglu was officially nominated as a presidential candidate by the opposition CHP party for the 2028 elections, news agency AFP reported on Monday, quoting a party spokesman.

The Republican People's Party (CHP) -- the main opposition party and the second largest party in parliament -- held a primary election on Sunday, at which the only candidate was Imamoglu, the main political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Imamoglu has been arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of his mayorship in less than a week following a graft and terror probe that the opposition has slammed as a political "coup."

This comes a day after an Istanbul court ordered formal arrest of Imamoglu and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.

Massive protests began in Istanbul after Imamoglu's arrest on Wednesday and have since spread to more than 55 of Turkey's 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police in the country's worst street protests in more than a decade.

The popular Imamoglu has been widely seen as the only politician who could defeat Turkey's longtime authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box and his arrest came just days before he was to be named as the opposition candidate in the 2028 presidential elections.

In just four days he went from being the popular mayor of Istanbul -- a post that launched Erdogan's political rise decades earlier -- to being arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a graft and terror probe.

Imamoglu's arrest and jailing drew a sharp condemnation late Sunday from France's foreign ministry, which denounced his imprisonment as "a serious attack on democracy".