Turkey’s main opposition CHP re-elected its leader Ozgur Ozel at an extraordinary congress Sunday as the party fights off a barrage of what critics say are politically-motivated legal challenges.
The move comes as the Republican People’s Party (CHP), seeks to shore up its leadership as opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have faced a series of lawsuits and arrests.
Among them is a potentially damaging lawsuit seeking to oust Ozel, which had its second hearing on Monday. It seeks to overturn the result of CHP’s November 2023 congress which elected Ozel, on grounds of alleged vote rigging.
At Sunday’s 22nd extraordinary congress in the capital Ankara, delegates overwhelmingly re-elected Ozel who won all 835 valid votes cast. Another 82 were ruled invalid.
Ozel’s re-election is expected to invalidate the legal grounds for the lawsuit against the party.
“The party is under attack, and they are trying every possible method,” he said after the vote, in remarks reported by Turkish media.
“Our legal experts and administrators are taking the most appropriate measures against this. With the holding of this congress, all their (legal) arguments are eliminated.”
As well as the vote, which Ozel has described as “an entirely technical and legal manoeuvre” to protect the party’s leadership, the CHP also met to forge a strategy going forward in the face of mounting obstacles.
Under Ozel’s leadership, CHP’s fortunes have improved significantly, with the party winning a huge victory over Erdogan’s AKP in the March 2024 local elections.
Since then, it has been targeted by a wave of arrests and legal cases — the most notable being the jailing of Istanbul’s popular and powerful mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March on corruption allegations that he denies.
The removal of Imamoglu — CHP’s candidate for the 2028 presidential election — sparked an outpouring of anger with Ozel leading huge protests that spread from Istanbul in the worst unrest Turkey has seen since 2013.
On September 2, a court ousted the leader of CHP’s Istanbul branch, Ozgur Celik, after annulling the outcome of the October 2023, provincial congress that elected him and 195 others.
At the time, political analyst Berk Esen said the move was a “rehearsal” for the bigger case against the overall leadership that was effectively seeking to hobble it as an opposition force.
It was not immediately clear how the vote would impact on the legal grounds for the CHP case, which has its next hearing on October 24.
CHP’s Istanbul branch will hold its own extraordinary congress on Wednesday to re-elect its leadership.
