Turkish court ousts CHP leadership amid opposition crackdown

ANKARA — A Turkish court on Thursday annulled the 2023 leadership vote that brought Ozgur Ozel to the helm of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, effectively removing the current CHP leadership and opening the way for former party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s return.

The ruling marks a major escalation in the legal crackdown on the CHP, which has already been hit by the imprisonment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, its presidential candidate, and a wave of probes, detentions and dismissals targeting opposition-run municipalities.

Ozel described the ruling as a “coup attempt” and vowed to fight it, saying his team would not hand over the CHP headquarters to the court-appointed leadership.

“Today, there has been an attempted coup against the party founded by [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk,” he told a large crowd gathered outside the party headquarters in Ankara. The CHP was founded in 1923 by Ataturk, the founder of the modern secular Turkish Republic.

The trial stems from allegations of vote-rigging at the CHP’s November 2023 congress, where Ozel defeated longtime chair Kilicdaroglu and took over the party leadership.

The Ankara court on Thursday ruled that the CHP’s current leadership, including chairman Ozel, be replaced by Kilicdaroglu and the party’s former leadership team from before the 2023 congress.

Kilicdaroglu led the CHP from 2010 until his defeat in 2023. During that period, he lost multiple national elections against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including the latest presidential race in 2023.

Critics of the government say the crackdown is politically motivated and aimed at weakening the country’s main opposition party after it won the largest vote share in the 2024 local elections, becoming Turkey’s top-voted party. While government officials insist the judiciary is independent, opposition leaders and international observers including the European Union have repeatedly raised concerns about the erosion of judicial independence in Turkey.

In a televised statement following the ruling, Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said the decision could be appealed, describing it as having “reinforced citizens’ trust in democracy.”

After an emergency meeting with CHP officials, Ozel said later Thursday that the party had appealed the ruling.

Kilicdaroglu’s return is likely to deepen anger among CHP supporters as well as government critics, many of whom already view the former leader as enabling — or at least benefiting from — the government’s crackdown. The backlash intensified after Kilicdaroglu released a video on X on Wednesday accusing the CHP of being stained by corruption and saying the party “knows how to cleanse itself,” in an apparent reference to corruption trials against CHP officials, including Imamoglu, which critics have slammed as politically motivated. 

“The CHP is standing firm against all coup plotters and all of their collaborators,” Ozel said late Thursday in an apparent jab at Kilicdaroglu. More than a thousand people gathered outside CHP headquarters late Thursday, chanting “traitor Kemal” and “President Imamoglu.”

Imamoglu also described the ruling as “null and void.”

“It is a coup against Turkey, against democracy, against the republic,” read a message shared on Imamoglu’s X account. “It amounts to destroying the constitutional order. It is time for the nation to stand up for Turkey.”

Markets rattled 

The decision also rattled Turkish markets. Borsa Istanbul fell 6% immediately following the ruling, triggering a market-wide circuit breaker, Reuters reported. 

The selloff reflects fears that renewed political turmoil could complicate Turkey’s economic stabilization program, which depends heavily on foreign investor confidence, tight monetary policy and expectations of political predictability. 

Following Imamoglu’s arrest in March 2025, Turkey’s central bank sold some $57 billion in reserves to defend the lira. Net reserves fell from more than $60 billion to less than $20 billion, while estimates put the intervention at more than $40 billion, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

This developing story has been updated since initial publication.