Istanbul mayor hit with another judicial probe, media reports

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - An Istanbul prosecutor launched another judicial investigation into the city's Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Monday for attempting to influence the judiciary after he criticised legal probes into opposition-run municipalities, Turkish media reported.

News of the investigation came minutes after Imamoglu, who is seen as a likely future presidential challenger to Tayyip Erdogan, accused Erdogan's government of using the judiciary as a political tool to pressure the opposition.

At a press conference, Imamoglu said the same expert witness had been appointed for several judicial probes into him and other district municipalities in Istanbul run by the CHP main opposition party, to which Imamoglu belongs.

The government dismisses accusations of political interference in the cases and says the judiciary is independent.

The new investigation, reported by the private Anka news agency and other Turkish media, comes a week after a judicial probe was launched against Imamoglu for criticising the Istanbul prosecutor for the brief detention of the CHP's youth branch head.

Imamoglu has already been sentenced in 2022 for insulting public officials when he criticised a decision to cancel the first round of earlier municipal elections, in which he defeated the ruling AK Party (AKP) candidate. He appealed against the sentence, but if it is upheld by higher courts he could be banned from politics for five years.

He was re-elected as mayor last year when Erdogan's AKP suffered its worst ever losses in municipal elections.

(Reporting by Birsen Altayli, Writing by Huseyin Hayatsever, Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Mark Potter)