Turkey’s main opposition to convene extraordinary congress amid crackdown

Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will convene an extraordinary party congress on April 6, chairman Ozgur Ozel tells reporters, as his party faces a broader legal crackdown.

The move comes amid an investigation launched by an Ankara prosecutor into the party’s latest congress held in 2023 over irregularities.

Ozel says it will hold the congress to prevent the appointment of a trustee to the party. The move comes after the CHP’s Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main rival of President Tayyip Erdogan, was detained this week facing an array of charges.

Meanwhile, an Istanbul court has ordered prominent Turkish journalist Ismail Saymaz to be placed under house arrest in an investigation connected to nationwide protests in 2013, opposition television channel Halk TV reports.

Saymaz, who works for Halk TV, was initially taken into custody on Wednesday over the charge of assisting an attempt to overthrow the government during the 2013 protests.

In 2013, small demonstrations against plans to build a shopping mall in Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, swelled into hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the government nationwide – and prompted a harsh crackdown.

Halk TV reports that the prosecutor questioned Saymaz’s social media posts as well as phone calls and messages with the Gezi Park trial defendants, including businessman Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in April 2022.