The Turkish government has taken a step toward allowing criminal cases against 10 opposition lawmakers, including the head of the country’s main opposition party, to move forward by referring requests to lift their parliamentary immunity to a committee in parliament, the Birgün daily reported.
The requests submitted by the presidency target lawmakers from four opposition parties, among them Özgür Özel, who heads the Republican People’s Party (CHP), senior CHP lawmakers Ali Mahir Başarır and Özgür Karabat, İYİ (Good) Party deputy leader Turhan Çömez, lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Vezir Coşkun Parlak and Özgül Saki, and Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) lawmaker Ahmet Şık, sending the cases to a parliamentary committee for review.
Details of the accusations cited in the requests have not been made public.
Özel faces four separate requests to lift his immunity, while İYİ Party lawmaker Lütfü Türkkan faces two, according to the parliamentary submission.
Under Turkey’s constitution, lawmakers are shielded from prosecution while in office unless parliament votes to remove their immunity, a process opposition parties say has increasingly been used against critics of the government.
Similar requests to lift the immunity of opposition lawmakers have been filed repeatedly in recent years, with parliament approving some of them, paving the way for prosecutions that critics say are aimed at silencing dissent. Lawmakers from pro-Kurdish parties have been frequent targets of such cases, with several previously jailed or removed from office after their immunity was removed.
The move comes amid a broader crackdown on the CHP that has intensified since the party’s sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections, when it again won İstanbul, Ankara and other major cities and secured the largest share of the national vote for the first time in decades.
The CHP described the probes and operations as part of a year-long government campaign targeting its municipalities and mayors in a report titled “Judiciary Against the Ballot Box: The Anatomy of a Coup,” released in late October.
According to the report 16 CHP mayors are currently jailed, while trustees have been appointed to 13 municipalities across the country. The report documented mass arrests, politically motivated prosecutions and the seizure of opposition-run municipalities following the 2024 elections. It also noted a surge in corruption and terrorism-related investigations into CHP officials since the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in March 2025, calling his case “the most visible example of political pressure on the opposition.”
