In May this year, police in Ankara stormed the headquarters of the Republican People’s party (CHP), the oldest political party in Turkey. Officers used teargas to enforce a controversial appeal court decision that reinstated the CHP’s 77-year-old former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – seen as less of a threat to the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). CHP members aligned with Kılıçdaroğlu’s successor, Özgür Özel, placed furniture at the building’s entrance, creating a barrier to prevent police from entering. It didn’t work. Hours later, party members loyal to Özel were physically removed from the premises.
Entering the offices of Turkey’s leading opposition party in such a fashion was a spectacular act with historic consequences. Last Friday, Özel and 90 CHP deputies resigned from their party and declared the founding of the New (Yeni) party. The CHP had served as Turkey’s main opposition since 2002. But not any longer: with the exodus of members to the New party, the CHP is reduced to just 44 legislators in the 600-seat parliament, its third smallest party out of seven.
Over the past week, Turkey’s new main opposition, with its 91 legislators, enjoyed strong winds in its sails. Throughout Turkish political history, those who have suffered legal injustices have gone on to benefit from them at the ballot box. In 1999, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself spent four months in prison. Four years later, he was prime minister. If managed well, the ousting of Özel from the CHP will probably boost the popularity of Turkey’s progressives overall.
But what of the CHP itself? This is the party Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded in 1923, which played a crucial role in establishing the modern republic of Turkey. In the past 18 months, it has witnessed a stunning reversal of fortunes.
At Turkey’s nationwide local elections in March 2024, the CHP was Turkey’s most popular political party. Özel’s leadership engineered that success: the CHP won 37.8% of the vote, beating Erdoğan’s AKP on 35.4%. This was the first national election since the AKP’s establishment in 2001 in which it wasn’t the largest party – a decisive moment in Turkish politics and one with worrying implications for Erdoğan in the run-up to 2028’s presidential elections. The CHP victory, on a platform of municipal socialism, has raised the profile of a generation of young, charismatic leftwing mayors who, like Zohran Mamdani in New York, won office in Turkey’s wealthiest and most populous cities: Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir.
Their proximity to power must have raised concerns among the country’s ruling elites, who have profited from an economic order that prioritises the construction, defence and tourism industries. Three weeks after he announced his candidacy for the presidential elections, in March last year, Istanbul’s CHP mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was removed from office. He has been accused of 142 offences, including accepting bribes, unlawfully obtaining personal data, racketeering, leading a criminal organisation, interfering with public tenders and aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK). His charges could lead to 2,430 years behind bars, and it looks extremely unlikely that he will be able to run for president in 2028. Writing in this newspaper from jail last September, İmamoğlu claimed Erdoğan was “weaponising the courts against the democratic opposition”. (The government has denied putting pressure on the courts to prosecute CHP mayors.)
Since İmamoğlu’s arrest, a different CHP city or district mayor has been arrested almost every month. One after another, politicians have been sent to jail or threatened with prosecution. Several detained CHP mayors have since been released, including İnan Güney, the suspended mayor of Istanbul’s touristic hub, Beyoğlu.
Over time these developments led to apathy among opposition supporters: for months, it felt almost impossible to keep up with CHP’s legal troubles, which dominated the Turkish media.
When İmamoğlu was arrested in March 2025, it triggered nationwide protests, the largest in Turkey in more than a decade. But since then, court cases against the CHP have largely been met with silence. In April, I went to follow İmamoğlu’s case in a courtroom in Silivri, 83km (52 miles) away from Istanbul’s city centre; I saw no supporters inside or outside the courtroom. The cab driver who took me to the court that day said he wished to see the CHP mayor of Silivri in jail next. While holidaying on Büyükada island off the coast of Istanbul two months later, I heard of the Silivri mayor’s arrest. By the end of June, Büyükada’s CHP mayor had been jailed too.
After his reinstatement as party leader, Kılıçdaroğlu implied, in a public statement, that those CHP mayors could indeed be guilty. Likening the CHP to a tree, he said: “The shade of this mighty tree can never, ever be a refuge for the forbidden and the polluted. When necessary, it knows how to purify itself and conduct its inner accounting.” Kılıçdaroğlu’s call for purification has led to fury among opposition supporters, protests and an exodus of party members.
Despite the excitement over Özel’s New party, it faces challenges: it lacks CHP’s resources, personnel, history and financial support from Turkey’s treasury. Breakaway parties have often suffered defeat in Turkish politics: the Good party, established in 2017 by disgruntled Turkish nationalists, has little support among the electorate. The Future party and the Democracy and Progress party (DEVA), founded by former AKP leaders in 2019 and 2020, fared poorly in elections, failing to distinguish themselves from the AKP.
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The CHP is a similar colossus, with an unsurpassable brand name in Turkish politics. It is the Republic of Turkey’s founding party, the party of Atatürk, and its history carries a lot of weight.
Özel has defined the New party as “social democrat”, and the party programme acknowledges Turkey’s different religions, ethnicities and languages. It also references gender and sexual orientation, terms that have become taboo in Turkey in recent years. The New party embraces full membership of the EU and promises to increase Turkey’s role at the Council of Europe and Nato.
If Özel can position his party as not just another splinter party but the new CHP, that would be an attractive proposition. A century ago, the CHP implemented a flurry of social, cultural and political reforms across Turkey, from the abolition of the caliphate to significant advancements in women’s rights. In the 1960s and 1970s it found support from students, the underprivileged and the marginalised with its leftist turn.
The New party should promise an equally bold and progressive agenda. That way it won’t just emerge as the victor of the 2028 elections but will be in a position to truly transform Turkey.
