A presidential motion seeking the removal of parliamentary immunity for 61 lawmakers from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has been submitted to the Turkish Parliament as part of an expanding crackdown on the party, Turkish Minute reported Monday.
According to the motion, dated July 3 and submitted to the CHP parliamentary group, the summary of proceedings includes details such as the names of the lawmakers, case file numbers, judicial authorities involved and the accusations directed at the lawmakers, Turkish media reports said. The memo officially confirms that there are 240 pending requests to lift the legislative immunity of 61 CHP lawmakers including the party’s leader, Özgür Özel.
The document targeting nearly half of the CHP’s 135-member parliamentary group was signed by the head of Parliament’s Constitution Committee, Serap Yazıcı Özbudun, who was elected under an opposition alliance including the CHP in 2023 but later joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Journalist Ali Deniz Çakır drew attention to the political irony, pointing out on social media, “The person who signed [the memorandum] is Serap Yazıcı, elected to parliament with CHP votes. That’s the tweet.”
Gökhan Günaydın, deputy parliamentary group chair of the CHP, also condemned the move on X, sarcastically expressing criticism of Turkey’s political environment and echoing growing frustration within the opposition.
“A presidential memorandum targeting 61 of the 135 CHP deputies is now before the parliament. The president is also the leader of Turkey’s second-largest party, the AKP… Isn’t the established order magnificent?” he said.
The development follows the March arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s presumptive 2028 presidential candidate, who was jailed on corruption-related charges widely seen as politically driven. His detention and subsequent arrest sparked mass protests across Turkey, the country’s largest wave of civil unrest since the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
The pressure on the CHP has mounted since the party’s sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections in which the AKP suffered its worst electoral defeat in two decades, losing control of key cities to the opposition.
Opposition leaders and rights groups have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP government of using judicial pressure to suppress political rivals and roll back democratic gains made by opposition-held local governments.
Just days ago, three additional CHP mayors were detained in early morning raids, intensifying fears about erosion of the rule of law and political freedoms across Turkey.
Currently, there are dozens of CHP officials and many mayors who are jailed pending trial. The crackdown on the party began last October with the arrest and removal from office of Ahmet Özer, mayor of İstanbul’s Esenyurt district, on terrorism-related charges.
The prosecution of members of Parliament has been possible since the CHP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) lent support to a 2016 proposal submitted by the AKP on removing deputies’ immunity from prosecution. The immunity of all deputies who faced prosecution was lifted in May 2016.
