Turkish court ousts CHP leadership amid opposition crackdown
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.
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.
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.
The CHP called an emergency meeting of its party assembly after the decision. Scores of CHP supporters gathered outside of the party’s headquarters following the ruling.
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 is a developing story and has been updated since its initial publication.
