Acting mayor of İstanbul district joins ruling AKP after quitting main opposition party

Özlem Vural Gürzel, acting mayor of İstanbul’s Beykoz district, formally joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Saturday, just days after resigning from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

At a ceremony held at İstanbul’s Haliç Congress Center, Erdoğan personally welcomed Gürzel into the party by pinning the AKP badge to her jacket.

“We are pleased to see her join the AKP family,” the president said, adding that the party would work “shoulder-to-shoulder” to lift what he described as the “cloud of mismanagement” over İstanbul.

Gürzel thanked her new colleagues during her speech, saying, “To my new family, thank you for embracing me.” She added that she looked forward to the government’s support in delivering services to Beykoz.

Her defection marks a dramatic turn in the district. The CHP captured Beykoz for the first time in decades in the March 2024 local elections, narrowly winning the mayoralty and securing a majority on the 31-member city council.

In February 2025, however, Mayor Alaattin Köseler was detained in a corruption probe as part of a crackdown on CHP-run municipalities and later jailed, prompting the council to elect Gürzel as acting mayor on March 10.

On September 9 she resigned from the CHP, citing what she described as insults, sexist remarks and unbearable internal pressure from party colleagues. She said she had been left alone to face allegations in court and had instead found backing from the AKP and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Her departure was followed by the resignation of two other CHP council members, Uğur Gökdemir and Murat Uzun, who announced that they would serve as independents. Those moves cost the CHP its majority in the Beykoz city council, reducing its seats to 15 against 14 for the AKP-MHP bloc, with two independents holding the balance.

The AKP has hailed Gürzel’s move as evidence of disarray within the opposition, while CHP leaders accuse the government of exploiting legal cases and political pressure to fracture their ranks.

Gürzel’s move is the latest in a series of defections from the ranks of the main opposition. Among them is Aydın Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu, who left the CHP last month to join the AKP. Critics say mayors are often pressured into switching sides, either by the threat of corruption probes or by promises of government financial support.