, escalating a crackdown on the party after its gains against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2024 local elections.){kind=link}
Thousands of people rallied in Ankara and İstanbul on Friday to protest a court ruling that removed the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), escalating a crackdown on the party after its gains against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2024 local elections.
An Ankara court on Thursday annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership election, citing alleged vote buying.
The ruling removed current party leader Özgür Özel, a critic of Erdoğan, and named former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as interim leader.
The CHP, Turkey’s oldest political party, defeated the AKP in the 2024 local elections and has been rising in opinion polls.
Özel called on supporters to gather Friday evening outside CHP headquarters in Ankara.
“They will leave, we will stay,” protesters shouted outside the headquarters, according to Agence France-Presse journalists.
“Erdoğan can see perfectly well that he will no longer win elections. He wants to leave the people without a candidate, without a party, without leadership and without hope,” Özel told the crowd, which waved red banners, the color of the Turkish flag.
“The target of this attack is the entire democratic system. All freedoms and all rights are under assault,” he said.
In İstanbul, a large march drew hundreds of Özel supporters near Dolmabahçe Palace, the 19th-century Ottoman palace on the European shore of the Bosporus where Erdoğan has an office.
Rallies were also held in five districts of İstanbul, Turkey’s largest city, where Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival, has been jailed since last year.
Demonstrations were also held in İzmir, an opposition stronghold on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
The European Union raised concerns about the rule of law, judicial independence and democratic pluralism in Turkey, saying the opposition must be allowed to operate freely.
“We are going to suffer, we are going to fight, but we will hold firm. We will once again become this nation’s hope!” Özel had earlier said on X, calling on “all those who love their country to resist and rewrite history.”
“This is not CHP business. This is the people’s business,” he said.
Kılıçdaroğlu led the CHP for years but lost several elections to Erdoğan and was removed at a party congress in November 2023, five months after losing a presidential race.
The protests may face a test of momentum because Friday evening marked the start of a nine-day government holiday tied to Eid al-Adha.
The case is widely seen as an attempt to weaken the CHP after its local election victories.
Analysts said the ruling continued a process that began with the arrest of İmamoğlu, the CHP’s presidential candidate and its most popular figure.
İmamoğlu was jailed on charges widely seen as political.
On Thursday he said the court order was not only a move against the CHP but “a coup against Turkey, against democracy.”
“This is serious. It transcends parties. It is time for the nation to come together to defend Turkey,” he wrote on X.
İmamoğlu was detained on the day the CHP named him as its candidate for the next presidential election, scheduled for 2028.
His biggest trial started in March, with prosecutors seeking a prison sentence of up to 2,430 years.
© Agence France-Presse