The until recently leader of the Turkish opposition, Özgür Özel, has announced his “timely but sad farewell” from the historic Republican People’s Party (CHP) to found a new political party alongside a group of CHP MPs, following the long legal and political battle that has triggered a serious crisis within the party founded by Atatürk.
During the weekly meeting of the CHP parliamentary group at the Turkish parliament’s headquarters in Ankara, Özel bid farewell for the last time from the podium, saying: “Every ending is a beginning. I take to this podium with the sadness of a farewell whose time has come,” he said, as quoted by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
“The party’s name may change, its logo may change, but they cannot break this unity… We are on the brink of a painful farewell, the time for which has come. We wish to share that we carry within us the hope of a new beginning. We are aware that Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the founder of this party and that he constitutes its legacy… We are leaving the headquarters, but we are taking the legacy with us under our protection,” he said during his speech.
“We will become the main opposition party”
“Having completed the technical procedures, we are founding our new party. Tomorrow we will take the first step. We will establish our new party with the elected MPs, thereby taking the first step. With the party we are to establish, we will become, by a wide margin, the main opposition party. As I take my leave of this podium today, I declare that I will never relinquish the podium of the parliamentary group of the main opposition party,” he announced.
Özel once again lashed out at the current CHP leader during his speech, claiming that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s aim is to prolong the internal crisis within the CHP in order to make it easier for the AKP and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to win the upcoming elections, thereby reiterating his theory that Kılıçdaroğlu is part of a plot hatched by Erdoğan. For all these reasons, he stated that the new party’s main objective will be to come to power and put an end to the current political system in Turkey.
A serious crisis triggered by a court ruling
The deep-seated crisis within the CHP, Turkey’s main opposition party, was triggered when a court ruling handed down on 21 May found in favour of party members who had alleged that the election of Özel during the party congress held in November 2023 had been riddled with irregularities.
The ruling by the Ankara court – pending appeal to the Supreme Court – found that the alleged bribes to delegates and the vote-buying to ensure Özel’s election and thereby oust Kılıçdaroğlu had been proven, as part of a plan allegedly orchestrated – according to witnesses and whistleblowers – by the former mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu (currently in prison); consequently, the judgement ordered Kılıçdaroğlu to be reinstated as party leader.
Since then, Özel and his supporters – including the majority of CHP MPs in the Turkish parliament – have attempted to overturn the ruling and force the convening of an extraordinary party congress that would allow Özel to be reinstated as leader of the Turkish opposition; having failed to do so, he finally confirmed last month his plans to form a new party with which to contest the forthcoming elections.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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