⁍ Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said on Saturday he has been hospitalised after testing positive for coronavirus and suffering a fever.

---

⁍ Istanbul’s American Hospital said in a statement that Imamoglu, an opponent of President Tayyip Erdogan, was admitted at 10 p.m.
It said he tested positive for coronavirus and his treatment was continuing.

---

– The mayor of Istanbul, an outspoken critic of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, says he is in the hospital with a respiratory illness that has turned out to be coronavirus, the BBC reports. Ekrem Imamoglu, who was elected mayor in June 2019, said in a video that he was admitted to the hospital on Friday with a temperature of 38 degrees and a fever. “Now I am actually well,” he said. “My fever is not bad. The process is continuing. There is nothing that can be viewed as negative in a medical sense.” The hospital said in a statement that the mayor had tested positive for coronavirus and that his treatment was continuing, Reuters reports. Imamoglu, from the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), was elected mayor in a re-run election in June 2019 in what was at the time a blow to Erdogan and his ruling AK Party. Since then, there have been sporadic tensions between his municipality and the central government, including disputes over fundraising and measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic in the early stages of the outbreak.