When 21-year-old Berkay Gezgin left the interior of Istanbul city hall, a squad of police was waiting for him outside. Protests that flooded the streets outside the headquarters of his political hero, detained mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, had begun trickling away by midnight, but hundreds of riot police remained clustered around the municipality building.
Gezgin became the face of youth support for İmamoğlu when he met him on the campaign trail during his first run for mayor in 2019, coining the slogan “Everything will be fine”, which the Istanbul mayor later used in his campaign.
