Turkish opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu won a landslide victory in Istanbul’s re-run mayoral elections June 23, inflicting a heavy defeat on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose rise to power began with winning the city’s mayorship in 1994 and who has said “whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey.” What might have been a contest over garbage collection and municipal budget management became a “fight for democracy” after “the people’s freedom was robbed,” Imamoglu told TIME in a pre-election interview Friday.