An Ankara court on Monday adjourned a key hearing into alleged vote buying that could upend the leadership of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has been battling a growing array of legal challenges.
After more than an hour’s debate, the judge adjourned the case until October 24, an Agence France-Presse correspondent inside the court said of the hearing which could have big impact not only on the party but on Turkish democracy.
Critics say the vote-buying case is a politically motivated attempt to undermine Turkey’s oldest political party, which won a huge victory over President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2024 local elections and has been rising in the polls.
The CHP denies the charges and has accused the government of using the judiciary to carry out a “political coup,” hosting a rally late Sunday that saw vast crowds of protesters packing into Ankara’s Tandoğan Square in a huge show of defiance.
When the hearing opened, the room was packed with journalists and lawyers, while outside there was a heavy police deployment, with armed officers at the entrance and hundreds more in riot gear waiting in buses parked nearby, the correspondent said.
The case seeks to overturn the result of a CHP congress in November 2023 on grounds of vote rigging. During the vote, longtime party chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was ousted and Özgür Özel, was elected in his place. He remains party leader today but faces being unseated if the lawsuit succeeds.
The indictment names Kılıçdaroğlu as the injured party and seeks jail terms of up to three years for 11 CHP mayors and officials for “vote-rigging.”
The CHP’s popularity has grown since it led Turkey’s biggest street protests in a decade, triggered in March by the jailing of its presidential candidate, İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
“This case is political. The allegations are slander… This is a coup (and) we will resist,” roared Özel to a sea of flag-waving supporters in Ankara on Sunday.
“We are facing the grave consequences of Turkey’s government abandoning the ‘democracy train’ and choosing to govern through oppression rather than the ballot box… Unfortunately, anyone who poses a democratic threat to the government is now the government’s target.”
In a move to safeguard the leadership, CHP has convened an extraordinary congress on September 21, which the party confirmed on Monday would go ahead as planned.
At the session, delegates are expected to hold a fresh primary that will re-elect Özel.
Assault on democracy?
“Fraud in the voting which was coordinated by İmamoğlu and Özel overruled the will of the congress,” one of the complainant’s lawyers told the court, claiming they “distributed money, and offered jobs and tender opportunities to delegates.”
He asked that the court declare the congress results null and void, remove Ozel as a matter of urgency, and bring back Kılıçdaroğlu and his team to head the party.
But CHP’s lawyer Çağdaş Karaküçük accused the court of “trying to intervene in the internal affairs of a political party,” saying the real aim was to return Kılıçdaroğlu to the leadership “by force.”
Özel and eight other lawmakers are also being investigated on similar charges but their case is being handled by a parliamentary unit because as MPs, they all have immunity.
On September 2, a court ousted the leadership of the CHP’s İstanbul branch over allegations of vote-buying at its provincial congress, appointing a trustee to take over in a move widely seen as a test run for Monday’s case.
The ruling sparked angry protests and prompted the stock market to tumble 5.5 percent, raising fears that Monday’s outcome could also damage Turkey’s fragile economy.
İstanbul’s jailed mayor denounced the case as an assault on democracy.
“This isn’t about the CHP, it’s about the existence or absence of democracy in Turkey,” İmamoğlu told reporters on Friday after appearing in court on unrelated charges.
© Agence France-Presse