Turkey’s main opposition party lurched deeper into crisis Wednesday after reinstated Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said the party would hold a new congress only once legal conditions were met, days after a court annulled the 2023 vote that brought Özgür Özel to power and threw the country’s largest opposition force into open turmoil.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost Turkey’s 2023 presidential election to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and was later pushed out as CHP leader by Özel, told reporters that the party’s lawyers would help determine the timing. A congress, he said, “will be held, there is no alternative,” but only on a legal basis and under party rules.
That may sound procedural. In Turkey, these days, procedure can be political dynamite.
The Ankara appeals court ruling last week invalidated the CHP congress that elected Özel and ordered Kılıçdaroğlu and the previous party leadership back into office. Özel denounced the decision as a “judicial coup,” while supporters gathered at party headquarters and police later forced their way into the building. The turbulence rattled Turkish markets and raised fresh questions about the independence of Turkey’s courts.
The crisis lands at a dangerous moment for the opposition. The CHP scored major wins in the 2024 local elections and had been trying to build momentum toward the 2028 presidential vote. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Erdoğan’s strongest potential challengers, has been jailed since March 2025 on corruption charges the CHP rejects.
Other opposition parties have joined the outcry. Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, said, “The fate of political parties should not be determined by courts; it should be determined by their members and the choices of their voters.” Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party rejected claims of political interference, with party spokesman Ömer Çelik saying the judiciary was handling allegations tied to CHP infighting.
For Turkey’s opposition, the question is no longer only who leads the CHP. It is whether the party can fight Erdoğan while fighting itself.