, announced Tuesday that he and his allies are founding a new political party following a court ruling that removed him from CHP leadership and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the Anka news agency reported.){kind=link}
Özgür Özel, the ousted leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), announced Tuesday that he and his allies are founding a new political party following a court ruling that removed him from CHP leadership and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the Anka news agency reported.
Speaking at what he described as his final CHP parliamentary group meeting, Özel said lawmakers loyal to him would take the first formal step in establishing the party.
“We are establishing our new party, taking the first step with the deputies elected by our nation and entrusted with its mandate,” Özel said.
“After the technical procedures are completed, our newly established party, together with our deputies, will without a doubt become by far the main opposition party in the Turkish parliament.”
Özel’s announcement marked the most consequential development in the CHP leadership crisis since an Ankara court on May 21 annulled the party’s November 2023 congress at which he defeated Kılıçdaroğlu to become chairman.
The court treated the congress and its results as legally invalid from the outset due to alleged irregularities. It removed Özel and the party’s executive board and reinstated Kılıçdaroğlu on an interim basis.
Özel did not disclose the party’s name, logo or formal registration date. His team is expected to finalize those details at a meeting on Wednesday.
BBC Turkish reported, citing sources close to Özel, that nearly 90 lawmakers attended Tuesday’s meeting. Özel said 74 provincial CHP chairs were also present.
The CHP currently has 135 seats in Turkey’s 600-member parliament. If most of the lawmakers who attended Tuesday’s meeting join the new party, it would immediately become parliament’s largest opposition group.
Özel also suggested that support for the new party extended beyond those publicly identified with his camp.
“Anyone whom you have not personally heard say, ‘I am not in the new party, I am not with Özgür Özel and his friends,’ is with us,” he said.
Özel said he and his supporters were not abandoning their political identity.
“We are not taking off a shirt in politics. Together, we are putting on a shirt of fire for the future of this country,” he said, using a Turkish expression referring to assuming a difficult responsibility.
He said the goal of the new party would not merely be to remain the main opposition but to take power.
The May court ruling also declared subsequent extraordinary congresses, amendments to the party bylaws and changes to its political program null and void.
Özel and his allies appealed the decision and attempted to force an extraordinary congress at which delegates could elect new leadership.
His supporters submitted the notarized signatures of 833 delegates to CHP headquarters on June 17 demanding a congress with a leadership election, but Kılıçdaroğlu’s interim administration did not call one.
Özel and 28 allied Party Council members also resigned in June in an attempt to activate a bylaw provision requiring a congress when the council’s membership falls below two-thirds.
Özel said last week that preparations for a new party were proceeding on several fronts, including work on its name, logo, bylaws and political platform. At the time, he presented forming the party as a fallback if the legal challenges and attempts to convene a CHP congress failed.
Tuesday’s announcement confirmed that Özel’s camp had decided to proceed with the new party after weeks of preparations and unsuccessful efforts to regain control of the CHP.
The court ruling plunged the CHP into its most serious leadership crisis in years as it confronts a series of investigations targeting its municipalities and senior figures.
Among those jailed is İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s presidential candidate and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival. İmamoğlu has been in pretrial detention since March 2025 on corruption-related charges that he denies.
The CHP says the leadership case and investigations targeting its municipalities are part of a politically motivated campaign to weaken the party after it defeated Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the March 2024 local elections.
Erdoğan’s government denies interfering in the judiciary and says the investigations concern criminal allegations.
The new party would formally split Turkey’s largest opposition party ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2028, although an early election remains a possibility.