Turkey’s ousted opposition leader says he is forming new party to take on Erdogan

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — Turkey’s ousted opposition leader Ozgur Ozel on Tuesday said he would form a new party, two months after a controversial court ruling removed him from his post.

In a farewell address, Ozel — who led the Republican People’s Party (CHP) for nearly three years — told lawmakers at the party’s weekly parliamentary group meeting that Turkey stood at “a historic crossroads.”

“Once the necessary procedures are completed, the new party we are about to establish will become the main opposition force in the Grand National Assembly by a wide margin,” he said.

“We carry within us an unwavering hope for a new beginning,” he told lawmakers, who gave him a standing ovation.

Turkey’s oldest political party has been battling a deepening crisis since a court in May ordered the removal of Ozel, CHP’s elected leader, and reinstated his defeated predecessor, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

The highly controversial ruling by an Ankara court annulled the CHP’s November 2023 leadership election over allegations of vote-buying.

Critics view the move as the latest attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to remove his political opponents.

The decision has fueled concerns about the state of democracy and the rule of law in Turkey.

Ozel is reportedly due to submit an application to the interior ministry on Monday to establish the new party.

He declined to provide further details about the party, but it is widely expected to be called the “Yeni Parti” (“New Party”) with its founding council to consist primarily of members of parliament.

The aim is to become Turkey’s second largest parliamentary party — and therefore its main opposition.

For that, it would need to take at least 68 of CHP’s 135 lawmakers.

Political insiders told AFP that between 83 and 85 CHP lawmakers are expected to join the new faction.

If that happens, the CHP would be left with around 50 seats and forced into fourth position, behind the pro-Kurdish opposition party DEM, which has 56.

‘May our path be clear!’

“We have determined our direction with the nation,” Ozel later wrote on X.

“May our path be clear! The people will be the ones who both own and drive forward this path.”

Within months of Ozel’s election as leader, the party scored a huge victory in local elections, trouncing Erdogan’s ruling AKP — and since then it has been battling a growing wave of pressure.

Hundreds of CHP officials have been arrested as part of ongoing investigations into alleged corruption, including Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was widely seen as one of the only politicians capable of defeating Erdogan at the ballot box.

To date, 27 of its mayors are behind bars, detained on a range of alleged graft offenses.

After Imamoglu’s arrest, Ozel played a key role in mobilizing Turkey’s largest street protests in over a decade, which saw the party’s popularity rise in the polls.

An outspoken critic of Erdogan, the 51-year-old has appealed to the Supreme Court against the May 21 ruling that ousted him.

But it took nearly two months for it to reach the court, held up by administrative procedures that effectively meant it only arrived just hours before the court closed for the summer recess.

Although he had previously said he would wait for the outcome of the appeal, with that now unlikely before September, Ozel appears set to push ahead with the new party.