Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), on Tuesday urged Turkey’s top appeals court to rule quickly on a legal challenge in a leadership crisis engulfing the country’s main opposition party, warning that the dispute should not be moved into the streets.
Bahçeli made the remarks in a parliamentary group speech as the Republican People’s Party (CHP) faces one of its most serious internal crises in years. On May 21 an Ankara appeals court annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress, which brought Özgür Özel to the party leadership, removed the current party administration from office as an interim measure and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his team.
Bahçeli said the dispute should remain within the bounds of law, democracy and political competition.
“No one should dare to stir Turkey up. Events should not spill into the streets and turn, through calls for physical confrontation, into action, attacks on security forces or attempts to disrupt the public order,” he said.
Bahçeli said the Supreme Court of Appeals, which has the authority to review objections to the ruling, should decide on the appeal as soon as possible “given the sensitivity of the matter.”
The CHP has been locked in a leadership crisis since the 36th Civil Chamber of the Ankara Regional Court of Justice annulled the party’s 38th Ordinary Congress, where Özel defeated Kılıçdaroğlu in November 2023 and became chairman. The court ruled that the congress was legally invalid and ordered Kılıçdaroğlu and the party bodies elected under his leadership to return to office on an interim basis.
The case concerns allegations of irregularities in the 2023 leadership vote, including claims of vote buying and manipulation. The CHP denies wrongdoing and says the lawsuits are part of a broader judicial campaign to weaken the party after its gains in the March 2024 local elections, when it finished ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the first time in decades.
Bahçeli, whose MHP is allied with Erdoğan’s AKP, said recent developments were damaging the CHP’s institutional standing and Turkey’s political culture.
“The developments that have taken place are moving from a level unbecoming of the CHP’s institutional identity toward a point that harms our political culture and democracy,” Bahçeli said.
He said Turkey was going through a period of political tension at a time of regional developments and a government-backed peace initiative with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has fought the Turkish state for four decades. The government refers to the process as the goal of a “terrorism-free Turkey.”
“Our expectation is that dangerous rhetoric and actions that would disturb social peace and increase provocations, such as physical confrontation instead of legal and political struggle, be avoided,” he said.
Bahçeli also called on the CHP to go through what he described as a process of internal purification, echoing language used by Kılıçdaroğlu one day before the court decision. The remarks drew criticism from within the opposition because of their timing, as the party was facing a wave of investigations and arrests.
In a video posted on X, Kılıçdaroğlu described the CHP as a “sacred trust” and said the party must not become a refuge for wrongdoing. Critics said the statement appeared to lend credibility to corruption allegations used in investigations targeting CHP-run municipalities.
The court ruling has also triggered a push by Özel and his supporters to convene an extraordinary congress. CHP delegates reached the required number of signatures on Monday to call a congress, after 111 CHP lawmakers, including Özel, called for the party to meet on July 12.
Sources close to Kılıçdaroğlu argue that no ordinary or extraordinary congress can be held until the annulment decision becomes final at the Supreme Court of Appeals. Özel’s camp rejects that position, saying the CHP has no choice but to hold a congress because the annulment ruling has left the party’s last valid congress as the one held in July 2020. They argue that if the party fails to hold a new congress before the six-year legal period expires in July 2026, it could lose its right to run in elections under a 2022 amendment to Turkey’s Law on Political Parties.
The CHP has been under growing legal and political pressure since its gains in the March 2024 local elections, with more than 20 of its mayors and hundreds of municipal officials detained or arrested in investigations the party says are politically motivated.
İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most prominent political rival and the CHP’s presidential candidate, was detained in March 2025 on corruption and terrorism-related charges that he denies.