An appeals court carried out a Turkey opposition party raid on Thursday by annulling the Republican People’s party’s 2023 leadership contest and removing 51-year-old Özgür Özel as head of the CHP. The ruling reinstated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and landed as the party faces hundreds of arrests and a March corruption trial.
Özgür Özel and the CHP
The court decision stripped Özel of the position he won through the annulled 2023 contest, putting Kılıçdaroğlu back at the top of the opposition party. The CHP called the ruling a "judicial coup" and said the decision hit the party while it was still carrying the weight of a wider crackdown on officials and politicians.
That pressure has already reached into the party’s leadership circle. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and CHP presidential candidate, was arrested last year on the day he was chosen for that role, a detail that links Thursday’s ruling to the broader pattern of legal pressure facing the party.
Erdoğan’s Legal and Political Pressure
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been in power since 2003, and the source says he pursued an increasingly authoritarian path after the 2013 Gezi Park protests. It also says his acolytes control the media and civil society has been pummelled, while Human Rights Watch says the justice system has been weaponised against the opposition.
Thursday brought another sign of that pressure. Erdoğan signed a decree closing a private university described as a centre of liberal views, even as the CHP’s disqualification triggered market stress that pushed the stock market down 6% and drove the lira to record lows. The central bank had already raised this year’s inflation target from 16% to 24% this month.
2028 Election Arithmetic
The court ruling matters because the next presidential election is scheduled for 2028 and Erdoğan has a two-term presidential limit. The source says Erdoğan could still run again if early elections are called, so the leadership of the CHP now sits inside a wider fight over timing, legal leverage, and constitutional power.
Donald Trump added to the political backdrop on Thursday by praising Erdoğan as a "tough guy" who has "done a very good job." For the CHP, the immediate question is how Kılıçdaroğlu uses the restored post after the party trounced the ruling Justice and Development party in 2024 local elections, while the legal and political pressure around the opposition continues to build.
