Turkey opposition vows fight after court ousts party leader

Turkey’s main opposition party moved quickly to resist a court ruling that stripped Ozgur Ozel of the leadership he won in 2023, a decision that exposed fresh fault lines between the judiciary, the ruling order and the country’s electoral legitimacy. The Ankara 36th Civil Chamber of the Regional Court of Justice annulled the Republican People’s Party’s congress and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, triggering immediate accusations that the legal system was being used to settle a political fight.

The case centers on the CHP’s 38th Ordinary Elective Congress, held on Nov. 4-5, 2023, at Ankara Arena. At that gathering, Ozel defeated Kilicdaroglu and ended his 13-year run as party leader. The court ruling has been described as an “absolute nullity” decision, and it was said to be appealable to the Court of Cassation within two weeks, giving the party a narrow legal window to try to reverse it.

For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for 23 years, the ruling carried significance far beyond an internal party dispute. It struck at a central question in Turkey’s political system: whether courts can determine party leadership in a country where institutions have already been strained by years of concentrated executive power. The CHP has become the main institutional challenge to Erdogan’s rule, and the party won the largest vote share in the 2024 local elections, a result that strengthened its claim to democratic legitimacy.

The legal move also landed against the backdrop of a broader crackdown on the opposition. Reuters-linked reporting said hundreds of CHP members and several mayors had been detained or jailed, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, whose detention on March 19, 2025, ignited wider protests and drew accusations of political targeting. Human Rights Watch called the court move a deeply damaging blow to the rule of law and democracy.

The market reaction was immediate and severe. Turkish stocks fell more than 6%, the lira touched a record low and the central bank was forced to sell billions of dollars in foreign reserves to steady the currency. Bloomberg reported that Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek convened an emergency meeting with senior officials on Friday, while JPMorgan said Turkey’s central bank might have to move quickly, with rates potentially needing to rise to 40% if instability deepened.

At CHP headquarters in Ankara, the ruling set off an emergency leadership meeting and drew swelling protests that grew to more than 5,000 people, with chants aimed at Kilicdaroglu. The size of the crowd and the speed of the financial selloff showed why this case looked less like a party dispute than a test of whether Turkey’s institutions could still keep politics, courts and markets from collapsing into one another.