A Turkish appeals court on Thursday removed Özgür Özel as leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, annulling the party’s 2023 leadership contest in a move that jolted markets and deepened the country’s political crisis.
The ruling reinstated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the man Özel had replaced, after a day in which the stock market plunged by 6% and the lira hit record lows before recovering on Friday. Özel, 51, had been credited with reviving the CHP, which trounced the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey’s 2024 local elections and emerged as the strongest challenge to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in years.
The court decision landed in the middle of a sweeping crackdown that has seen hundreds of CHP officials and politicians arrested. Human Rights Watch says that the justice system has been weaponised against the opposition, and the CHP itself has described the campaign as a “judicial coup.”
The pressure on the party has been building for months. A mass corruption trial opened in March, with Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu among the defendants. İmamoğlu was arrested last year on the day he was chosen as the CHP’s presidential candidate, a move that stripped the opposition of its most visible national figure and narrowed the party’s room to maneuver.
Kılıçdaroğlu returns to the helm after losing the 2023 election to Erdoğan. His reinstatement does not end the fight inside the opposition, but it does hand the president a legal and political opening at a moment when the CHP has tried to project momentum against him.
Erdoğan, who came to power in 2003 and has since pushed through constitutional changes that replaced Turkey’s parliamentary system with a highly centralized presidency, signed another decree on Thursday closing a private university known as a centre of liberal views. He still faces a two-term presidential limit, but he could run again if early elections are called.
That matters because Turkey’s next presidential election is scheduled for 2028, though many in Ankara believe it will come sooner. The central bank also raised this year’s inflation target from 16% to 24% this month, keeping economic strain high even as the political battle tightens. The combination of court rulings, arrests and market pressure has turned the opposition’s leadership fight into a test of how far the government can go in reshaping the field before voters return to it.
For Özel, the court’s decision erased a leadership built on momentum and local victories. For Erdoğan, it offered a fresh advantage in a system already criticized as increasingly one-man rule. What happens next will be measured not just by the CHP’s response, but by whether the pressure now shifts toward early elections or further legal blows.
