No ordinary resignation for Istanbul

Under normal circumstances, in a normal news cycle, the resignation of Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş should have been in the headlines throughout all subsequent days. But it had already become common news in pro-government news outlets on the morning of Sept. 22, and he waited until 7:00 p.m. that evening to announce it.

Still, there is something fishy in the whole process. Topbaş came from the ranks of the Islamist Refah Party and became a faithful soldier of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for more than a decade.

He could easily have become an MP and a possible urbanization minister, but Erdoğan kept him at the helm of the "tap." Istanbul had become the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) war chest, and during Topbaş's tenure there were many allegations that the wealth created by the re-zoning, deforestation and privatization of public land went a long way to financing the AK Party's election machine. 

So why did Topbaş, the silent but strong mayor of Istanbul, decide to suddenly quit? 

The resignation comes after his son-in-law, Ömer Faruk Kavurmacı, was arrested and jailed on the grounds that he had ties to the Fetullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ). According to sources I have spoken to, Kavurmacı was a member of TUSKON, a business group with close ties to FETÖ, but it was actually one of his brothers who had deeper ties to FETÖ - and he had already fled Turkey before the July 2016 coup attempt.

The real factor in the resignation of the AK Party's most important figure in local politics is believed to be infighting in the Istanbul municipal administration over financial resources. Topbaş had reportedly been resisting five very high-profile projects.

Sources close to Topbaş told me that...