Supporters of Turkey’s main opposition party turned out in large numbers for the party’s ousted leader during rival Eid al-Adha events in Ankara on Saturday, while the former chairman reinstated by a court order addressed a smaller crowd and repeated corruption claims that many opposition voters see as government talking points, Turkish Minute reported.
Özgür Özel was removed from the leadership of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) by a court decision annulling the party congress that brought him to power in 2023.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the court-installed former chairman, led the CHP from 2010 to 2023 and was defeated by Özel in an intraparty vote after he lost that year’s presidential election to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The two men held rival holiday greeting events during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday when Turkey’s political parties usually exchange greetings and issue messages of unity.
On Saturday the CHP base showed up in large numbers to listen to Özel’s speech in a central square in Ankara, while Kılıçdaroğlu spoke from the party headquarters that police cleared of Özel supporters last week after the court ruling.
Turkish media reports, images from the scene and on-the-ground streams indicated that Özel’s gathering at Güvenpark drew a much larger crowd than Kılıçdaroğlu’s event outside CHP headquarters, although no official crowd figures were available.
Before the events, pro-opposition outlets reported that groups close to Kılıçdaroğlu had organized buses from several provinces to bring supporters to Ankara.
Videos and interviews circulating from the headquarters event led commentators to question whether parts of the pro-Kılıçdaroğlu crowd reflected CHP grassroots support.
The impression among CHP voters is that Kılıçdaroğlu has the court order and the building, while Özel has the street, the elected party structures and the anger of the opposition base.
Özel addressed supporters from a bus near the CHP’s Ankara provincial office at Güvenpark.
He tried to stop chants against Kılıçdaroğlu and told the crowd that the target was not one person but what he called the political mentality behind the seizure of the party headquarters.
“This is not the issue of Özgür Özel and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu,” Özel said. “This is the issue of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan versus the nation.”
Özel said the court ruling was not an internal party dispute but an intervention in the voters’ ability to change power through elections.
“We are not the ‘appointed CHP,’ we are the ‘elected CHP,’” he said.
Özel said no one without a certificate of election could serve as CHP chairman and called on Kılıçdaroğlu to announce a congress date.
He said all 2 million CHP members should be allowed to vote for the party leader.
Özel said he would not run for the chairmanship again if he failed to receive at least 85 percent support in such a member vote.
Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, one of the CHP’s most prominent figures, joined Özel and said the party should organize a congress as soon as possible. “My position from the beginning has been on the side of democracy,” Yavaş said.
Özel later led supporters toward Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey and the CHP.
Kılıçdaroğlu, speaking at CHP headquarters, promised what he called a “clean congress” but said he would first hold people accountable. He accused unnamed figures inside the party of corruption, betrayal and damaging the CHP’s name.
He also said he regretted not earlier identifying people he accused of foreign links and corrupt figures in municipalities.
The remarks angered many CHP voters because they echoed the language used by Erdoğan, prosecutors and the pro-government media during investigations targeting CHP-run municipalities.
The opposition says those investigations are part of a campaign to criminalize the CHP after the party defeated Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the March 2024 local elections.
The CHP won a plurality of the nationwide vote in the elections, winning İstanbul, Ankara and other major cities and finishing ahead of the AKP nationwide for the first time since Erdoğan’s party came to power.
The party has since faced a series of investigations targeting municipalities it controls, along with the arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, its presidential candidate and Erdoğan’s main political rival.
İmamoğlu called on supporters to attend Özel’s Güvenpark event in a message posted through his campaign account on Friday.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s return and his language toward the CHP at a time when the party is under legal pressure from the state has drawn anger.
A recent video he posted calling for “cleansing” and “self-criticism” inside the party drew far more critical replies than likes on social media, according to Turkish media reports.
The AKP and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Erdoğan’s key ally, exchanged Eid greetings with the Kılıçdaroğlu-controlled headquarters, while several left-wing and opposition parties met only with the Özel-led CHP group in parliament.
Socialist International, a worldwide alliance of socialist, social democratic and labor parties, said Thursday it would continue to recognize Özel and the elected CHP leadership until the dispute is resolved in an acceptable and consensual way. The group also urged Kılıçdaroğlu to call an immediate extraordinary congress.
Saturday’s events suggested that Kılıçdaroğlu may have returned to the CHP leadership through a court ruling, but Özel still commands the visible loyalty of the party’s opposition base.
