The mayor of a western Turkish city said Friday she will leave Turkey’s main opposition party and join President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party, adding to a series of defections that have weakened the opposition’s control of municipalities it won in 2024.
Burcu Köksal, mayor of Afyonkarahisar, said she would join Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) at the party’s expanded provincial chairs meeting on Tuesday.
Köksal was elected mayor in March 2024 from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), ending 20 years of AKP rule in the city.
“Yes, I have made a decision. I will join the AKP at Tuesday’s expanded provincial chairs meeting,” Köksal said.
Köksal denied that she had made the decision under pressure, saying there was “no threat or coercion” behind her move and that she was not the subject of any criminal investigation.
She said she had met with Erdoğan for more than half an hour on Thursday and that the president told her his party would stand behind her.
Afyonkarahisar was one of the cities the CHP wrested from the AKP in Turkey’s March 31, 2024, local elections, when the opposition party scored its strongest nationwide result in decades.
Köksal’s victory had been seen as a symbolic gain for the CHP because Afyonkarahisar is a nationalist and conservative stronghold in Turkey’s interior, far from the party’s traditional coastal support base.
The mayor had long had a strained relationship with the CHP leadership after saying during the 2024 campaign that the doors of the Afyonkarahisar Municipality would be open to all political parties except the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a statement that sparked criticism from CHP leader Özgür Özel.
Erdoğan also criticized Köksal during the campaign over the same remarks, accusing her of representing a discriminatory political mindset, a comment that resurfaced in Turkish media after her decision to join his party.
Köksal’s planned defection also comes after days of speculation in Ankara and Afyonkarahisar, with Turkish media reporting that she had spoken with Erdoğan and would receive her AKP badge next week.
CHP lawmakers announced plans to go to Afyonkarahisar on Friday evening to protest the move and said they would defend the will of the voters who elected Köksal on the opposition ticket.
The AKP has not yet issued a detailed public statement on Köksal’s expected entry into the party, but the pro-government media presented the move as another sign of discontent inside the CHP.
Köksal would become one of the most high-profile CHP elected mayors to cross over to the AKP since the 2024 local elections, following Özlem Çerçioğlu, the mayor of the Aydın Metropolitan Municipality who joined the ruling party in August 2025 along with several district mayors.
At least 14 mayors elected from the CHP have joined the AKP since the 2024 vote, including district mayors from Aydın, Gaziantep, Yalova, Konya, Ardahan, Antalya, Şırnak, Çorum and Niğde, with Köksal’s formal entry bringing the number to 15.
The defections have unfolded along with a legal crackdown on CHP-run municipalities that began in October 2024 and intensified after the March 2025 arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival, with 23 CHP mayors having been jailed at some point since the 2024 local elections, of whom 20 remain in jail and 25 have been removed from office.