Erdogan’s new rival
The week’s biggest bombshell came from Ozgur Ozel, the ousted opposition CHP leader, who said he will probably form a new party.
Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Turkey. The week’s biggest bombshell came from Ozgur Ozel, the ousted opposition CHP leader, who said he will probably form a new party.
Read on for more details on that story and more.
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Erdogan’s new rival
Ozgur Ozel, leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, greets representatives of civil society organizations during a meeting in Diyarbakir, Turkey, on June 26, 2026. — Bilal Seckin / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images
Ozgur Ozel, who was ousted from the leadership of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) through the government’s usual legal shenanigans, announced that he will probably form a new party, as Ezgi Akin reported.
A survey by the Ankara-based MetroPoll polling company suggested that Ozel’s new party — which he says he will simply call the “New Party” — would beat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) if parliamentary elections were held now, with the former garnering 33.8% of the vote versus 27.0% for the latter. The same survey indicated that Ankara’s CHP mayor, Mansur Yavas, would win 51.8% of the vote against Erdogan’s 34.6%.
Those results stand in stark contrast to the prevailing consensus that Erdogan will secure a third — or fourth, depending on how one counts — term in the twin presidential and parliamentary elections due no later than May 2028.
Much could happen between now and then, and there is little doubt that Erdogan will seek to quash the new party before it gains traction. The party will need to establish local branches in all 81 of Turkey’s provinces to register as a legitimate political party ahead of the elections. Besides, who would have the courage to fund it?
Ozel was initially dismissed as a lightweight compared with Istanbul’s jailed mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. But he is rapidly gaining respect for his tenacity, touring the country nonstop — including the Kurdish-majority southeast, where he was received like a hero. I just got off the phone with Ilhami Isik, a veteran commentator who is in Diyarbakir, the political capital of the Kurdish movement. He confirmed that Ozel, who is now positioning himself on the left, is more popular there than the leaders of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party.
Let’s hope he doesn’t become a victim of his own success and end up behind bars like Imamoglu. Isik is fairly certain that he will. But even then, Erdogan will not win the next election, he insisted.
For more on the possible scenarios, tune in to my conversation with Suzy Hansen, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the recently published book "From Life Itself: Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan." The book is brilliant — and so is she.
A protester waves a flag bearing a portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party jailed in Turkey since 1999, during a demonstration calling for his release in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria on Feb. 15, 2025. — DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
Ocalan rules
Duran Kalkan, a veteran commander of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), gave an interview to the Turkish news channel Medyascope this week in which he stated unequivocally that the ongoing talks between the government and imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan are not about to collapse.
Speculation that the process initiated two years ago had hit a wall has been growing because the government has yet to take any concrete steps toward meeting Kurdish demands for greater rights. A draft bill that the Kurds hope will include meaningful reforms is more likely to amount to little more than a glorified amnesty, allowing thousands of eligible PKK fighters, along with many political prisoners, to return home. If Ocalan has signed off on it, then so be it — that is the underlying message of Kalkan’s interview.
One of the most striking aspects of the hour-long exchange was Kalkan’s dismissive assessment of the Syrian Democratic Forces. He argued that they had failed to understand that the United States’ relationship with them was purely tactical and that they should therefore not be surprised to have lost so much ground. That is rather rich, given the degree of influence the PKK continues to wield over the SDF even today. I promise to write about this in greater detail soon.
Other top stories
Ezgi also reported on how Ankara is cultivating military ties with Egypt in a bid to offset the emerging Greek-Cypriot-Israeli alignment in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Barin Kayaoglu wrote a detailed post-mortem of the NATO summit held in Ankara and what it means for Turkey’s defense industry.
The Atlantic Council hosted a particularly interesting event featuring Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, Levent Gumrukcu, who is a highly regarded diplomat.
Ezgi had another story on the ordeal of a Russian couple who were foolish enough to read passages from the Bible inside the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul. One can understand why they might have gotten carried away. After all, in its original form, Hagia Sophia was one of the most magnificent cathedrals ever built in the Orthodox Christian world during the sixth century.
The inimitable Nazlan Ertan wrote about 94-year-old Yoko Ono’s trip to Istanbul, along with much more, in her delightful Istanbul newsletter. Sign up for more on culture, food and fashion in Turkey.
And lastly, a trip down memory lane. Watch Turkey's hunky Ilhan Mansiz score a golden goal against Senegal that carried his team to third place in the 2002 World Cup in Korea.
