Ousted Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel and 90 other lawmakers resigned from Turkey’s main opposition party on Friday to establish Yeni Parti (New Party), which is set to become the second-largest group in parliament.
Özel signed his resignation and the party’s founding documents during a video broadcast from his office, where he sat beside a Turkish flag.
“May it be beneficial to our country, our nation, our party and all of us,” he said.
Party officials were expected to submit the documents to Turkey’s Interior Ministry around noon. Yeni Parti will begin with 91 seats in the 600-member parliament, placing it behind President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which holds 277 seats.
The CHP had 135 lawmakers before Friday’s resignations and will be left with 44. The Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which campaigns on Kurdish rights, has 56 seats.
The split follows a May 21 Ankara court ruling that annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress over allegations of vote-buying, removed Özel as chair and reinstated former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Kılıçdaroğlu lost the 2023 presidential election to Erdoğan and was replaced by Özel as CHP leader later that year. Under Özel, the CHP finished first nationwide in Turkey’s 2024 local elections, defeating the AKP in many large cities.
Özel’s removal prompted protests within the CHP and resignations by lawmakers, mayors, municipal council members, local officials and members of the party’s organization in the Netherlands.
Özel appealed the Ankara court ruling, but procedural delays meant the case reached Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals shortly before it began its summer recess. Özel announced this week that he would establish a new party instead of waiting for the appeal.
The CHP, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923, is Turkey’s oldest political party.
© Agence France-Presse