 leads the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) by eight points among young voters in a potential parliamentary election, according to a recent survey.){kind=link}
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leads the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) by eight points among young voters in a potential parliamentary election, according to a recent survey conducted by ORC Research.
The poll, conducted July 16–20 on 2,470 respondents aged 17 to 29, found that 29.6 percent of young voters said they would back the CHP, compared with 21.5 percent for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP.
GENÇLERİN OY TERCİHLERİ
"Bu Pazar Genel Seçim Olsa"
▪︎CHP %29,6
▪︎AK PARTİ %21,5
▪︎ZAFER %10,4
▪︎DEM %7,1
▪︎MHP %6,5
▪︎YRP %4,9
▪︎İYİ %4,4
▪︎TİP %3,6
▪︎YMP %2,6
▪︎SP %2,5
▪︎BBP %2,2
▪︎A PARTİ %2,0▪︎16-20 Temmuz 2025
▪︎17/29 Yaş – 2470 Katılımcı pic.twitter.com/6hrwsvTHQO— ORC ARAŞTIRMA (@orc_arastirma) July 23, 2025
Young people played a leading role in the protests that erupted after the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in March, organizing rallies, spreading messages on social media and taking to the streets in İstanbul and other cities. Many of them were detained during the demonstrations and even put in pretrial detention on charges of insulting the president or violating a law on meetings and demonstrations.
İmamoğlu is a key CHP figure widely seen as Erdoğan’s most powerful political rival. His imprisonment in a corruption case, described by critics as politically motivated, sparked nationwide protests led largely by students and young activists.
Following his arrest, thousands gathered outside İstanbul City Hall at the urging of the CHP, and the initial rally quickly escalated into nightly clashes with riot police that spread across the country. Nearly 2,000 people were detained, among them many students as well as a handful of journalists.
Although the nightly protests ended after a week, the CHP has continued to hold rallies across Turkey, boosting its standing in the polls.
In a surprising development, the far-right, anti‑refugee Victory Party (ZP) led by Ümit Özdağ ranked third at 10.4 percent, showing that more young people in Turkey are supporting its tough stance on refugees in a country which has the world’s largest refugee population of more than 3 million.
The ZP is followed by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), currently the third largest party in parliament, at 7.1 percent.
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ultranationalist ally of the AKP, polled at 6.5 percent, below the 7 percent threshold needed to enter parliament.
In April 2022 Turkey reduced its national election threshold from 10 percent to 7 percent, a move widely seen as aimed at helping the AKP and MHP retain parliamentary power amid declining public support. The change came as polls showed the MHP struggling to surpass the previous threshold, prompting critics to argue that the amendment was motivated more by political survival than democratic reform.
Other parties polled in the single digits: the Islamist New Welfare Party at 4.9 percent, the nationalist İYİ (Good) Party at 4.4 percent and the left-wing Workers’ Party at 3.6 percent. Minor parties remained below 3 percent.
The survey comes amid a sweeping crackdown on the CHP that began after the party’s major victory in the March 2024 local elections and has since expanded to a significant number of municipalities in what critics call the largest campaign of repression against an opposition party in decades.
Following the October arrest of Esenyurt Mayor Ahmet Özer, prosecutors have expanded the crackdown to include at least 17 CHP-held municipalities, among them İstanbul, Adana, Antalya and Adıyaman, citing charges such as corruption, bid rigging and aiding a terrorist group.
Critics say the crackdown, which has so far led to the arrest of 17 CHP mayors including İmamoğlu and dozens of party officials, aims to dismantle the opposition’s growing influence through legal and administrative pressure.
In a related development, a Turkish court on Wednesday ordered the continued pretrial detention of 13 young protesters who were arrested during a mass demonstration on July 1 that marked the 100th day of İmamoğlu’s imprisonment and drew thousands of participants. Prosecutors have filed an indictment against 35 people in connection with the protest.