Turkish court ousts main opposition party leader Özgür Özel

A Turkish court ruling has removed the leader of the main opposition party, delivering the latest blow to challengers of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The ruling, issued Thursday by an appeals court in Ankara, annulled a 2023 leadership contest within the Republican People’s Party (CHP), deposing party leader Özgür Özel.

Özel, 51, has become the face of Turkey’s opposition, credited with rejuvenating the CHP and remaining one of the few party figures who have avoided charges that could lead to detention.

The court ordered that Özel be replaced by his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost a pivotal general election to Erdoğan in 2023 despite widespread opposition to the president’s two-decade rule.

Özel’s election as party leader preceded the 2024 local elections, in which the CHP swept Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) from power in municipalities and mayoralties nationwide.

Earlier this week, another Ankara court ordered Özel to pay the president 300,000 lira (£4,900) in damages for remarks about Erdoğan, including calling him an “oppressor.” Özel had also called on Erdoğan to “leash your dogs,” criticizing a sweeping crackdown on Turkey’s opposition.

In response, Erdoğan called Turkey’s main opposition leader “delusional,” saying: “We have to protect the reputation of politics in the face of attacks.” Erdoğan has frequently lashed out at the CHP, accusing it of acting as a “puppet of terrorists seeking to undermine this state.”

The court case that unseated Özel was widely criticized as an effort to subdue the CHP and reinstate a leader more amenable to Erdoğan’s rule.

Kılıçdaroğlu, who has called for the “purification” of his own party, was sanguine in his response to the ruling when speaking to the pro-government channel TGRT Haber, saying he hoped it would prove “beneficial to Turkey and the CHP.”

The ruling jolted Turkey’s struggling economy amid fears of further instability; trading was briefly suspended on the stock market in Istanbul amid a 6% drop in share prices.

Since the 2024 elections, observers have denounced a fresh crackdown targeting opponents of Erdoğan’s rule, primarily opposition mayors and local officials from the CHP. More than 20 CHP mayors have been detained on waves of corruption, bribery and terrorism-related charges.

The arrest last year of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, seen as a probable CHP presidential candidate, represented a watershed for the party and the country’s beleaguered opposition. Thousands of people took to the city’s streets in protest.

İmamoğlu has spent the intervening year in a maximum-security facility near Istanbul. Earlier this year he was among 400 defendants who took the stand in a mass trial, all accused of participating in a sprawling corruption scheme allegedly tied to his time as mayor.

Human Rights Watch called the trial part of a broad effort to weaponize the criminal justice system against the CHP.

Many other CHP municipal officials across Turkey have faced graft charges similar to the accusations against İmamoğlu. Five officials from the Beşiktaş municipality were taken into custody as part of a bribery investigation earlier this week.

CHP officials have indicated they are keen to fight a presidential election expected next year, and there has been speculation that they could seek to run the jailed former mayor İmamoğlu as a candidate.

Özel told the Guardian in an interview last year that the party had prepared plans for İmamoğlu to be the candidate even if he remained in detention, adding that he was prepared for the Turkish authorities to seek his arrest if Erdoğan “can’t cope politically like what happened with İmamoğlu.”

He said the upcoming election represented a referendum on whether there would be “autocracy or democracy in Turkey.”