, has founded the New Party to continue his challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after a court removed him as CHP chair in May.){kind=link}
Özgür Özel, the ousted leader of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), has founded the New Party to continue his challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after a court removed him as CHP chair in May.
Özel, 51, resigned from the CHP on Friday with 90 lawmakers. Their departure would give the New Party 91 seats in the 600-member parliament, making it the second-largest party and positioning it to become Turkey’s main opposition once its parliamentary group is formally registered.
“We’re all putting on a shirt of fire to save this country!” he said, using a Turkish expression for taking on a difficult and risky task.
Özel had led the CHP since November 2023 and became the face of Turkey’s largest protests in more than a decade after İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, then the CHP’s presidential candidate, was jailed pending trial on corruption charges in March 2025.
İmamoğlu and the CHP reject the charges as politically motivated. His arrest brought crowds into the streets across Turkey despite protest bans and police deployments, with demonstrators calling for the government to resign.
Until then, Özel had kept a lower profile than İmamoğlu. During the protests, his nightly speeches put him at the center of the opposition campaign against Erdoğan.
Erdoğan had already sued Özel and İmamoğlu for alleged slander over remarks they made at an October 2024 protest after a CHP mayor was jailed.
The case was followed by investigations targeting CHP municipalities. At least 27 CHP mayors have been jailed pending trial, and hundreds of party officials have been detained or arrested on corruption allegations. The party says the cases are part of a government effort to remove Erdoğan’s elected rivals.
Özel also faces several criminal cases, and prosecutors have sought to have parliament lift his immunity so he can stand trial.
The leadership dispute began after a court annulled the CHP’s November 2023 congress over allegations of vote buying. The ruling removed Özel and reinstated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, whom Özel had defeated at the congress.
Pharmacist turned politician
Özel was born in the western province of Manisa on September 21, 1974, to parents who were teachers.
After earning a degree in pharmacy from Ege University in İzmir, he worked as a pharmacist and later led the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association (TEB). He speaks German as well as Turkish.
He entered parliament in 2011 as a CHP lawmaker for Manisa.
In 2014, Özel pressed parliament to investigate mining deaths, but lawmakers from Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) rejected the proposal. Months later, 301 workers died in an explosion at a coal mine in Soma, the deadliest mining disaster in Turkey’s history.
Özel also served on CHP committees monitoring prison conditions and problems faced by university students. By 2018, his speeches as one of the party’s parliamentary group leaders had drawn attention beyond the CHP.
“He’s eloquent, articulate and highly critical of the government, and this strategy works,” political analyst Berk Esen said.
From local win to legal pressure
The CHP lost the May 2023 presidential election to Erdoğan in a defeat that left the party facing calls for a change in leadership.
Six months later, Özel defeated Kılıçdaroğlu by 812 votes to 536 at the CHP congress, promising to “write a new story and reshape Turkish politics.”
Under Özel, the CHP finished first nationwide in the March 2024 local elections, retaining İstanbul and the capital, Ankara, while winning municipalities in provinces where Erdoğan’s party had long held power.
Since then, courts and prosecutors have pursued CHP leaders and municipalities through cases that opposition parties and rights groups view as an attempt to sideline Erdoğan’s rivals. The government denies directing the judiciary.
The court ruling that restored Kılıçdaroğlu to the CHP leadership ended Özel’s tenure, but his move to the New Party has put him at the head of Turkey’s main opposition force.
© Agence France-Presse