Delegates from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) reached the required number of signatures on Monday to convene an extraordinary congress, after a court annulled the party’s 2023 leadership vote, ousting Özgür Özel and reinstating former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, Turkish Minute reported.
The signature threshold had been reached as of 4 p.m. on June 1, the ANKA news agency reported, while the collection of signatures continued.
The development comes after 111 CHP lawmakers, including Özel, called for an extraordinary congress on July 12, in the latest move by Özel and his supporters to challenge Kılıçdaroğlu’s court-ordered return to party leadership.
In a written statement signed by the lawmakers, the CHP deputies said they rejected efforts to shape the party through court rulings that they described as contrary to the constitution and the rule of law.
“The only power that will decide the direction, course, fate and administration of our party is our delegates, who emerge from among our members through elections,” the statement said.
The signatories include former deputy parliamentary group chair Engin Altay, who had kept his distance from the Özel leadership before the annulment decision, and Uğur Bayraktutan, who returned to the chairmanship of the party’s High Disciplinary Board under the court ruling. The three had also not attended the parliamentary group meeting at which Özel was elected group chairman.
The signature drive was announced by İstanbul deputy Zeynel Emre, after a meeting at parliament on Sunday.
CHP parliamentary group chairman Özel, who continues to use the title of the party’s “elected chairman,” met with party members whose duties were terminated by the Kılıçdaroğlu leadership after the court ruling, also attended the meeting.
According to information provided after the meeting, the party decided that the organizational structure in place before the annulment ruling, including the presidential candidate office, would continue its work.
Under CHP bylaws, an extraordinary congress must be convened within 45 days if an absolute majority of delegates signs a petition.
Özel had said Monday that the signature drive had begun shortly after 8 a.m. and that the required number was “a little over 550.”
He said the first signature came from a Kayseri delegate who had opposed him at the previous congress and had strongly criticized him within the party. He described the move as symbolically important because it showed that even former intra-party opponents viewed the court ruling as an attack on the will of the congress.
Özel also said all signatures from Rize, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s home province, had been completed within 10 minutes and that signatures were being collected rapidly from across Turkey.
Legal uncertainty over congress
However, Kılıçdaroğlu, speaking at CHP headquarters on Saturday, tied the possibility of holding a congress to the completion of what he called a process of “reckoning and purification.”
Sources close to Kılıçdaroğlu argue that no ordinary or extraordinary congress can be held until the annulment decision becomes final at the Supreme Court of Appeals. They say that even if Özel’s team gathers the required signatures, the congress request cannot be processed.
İstanbul MP Emre rejected that position, saying the CHP had no choice but to hold a congress immediately because the court ruling had left the party’s last valid congress as the one held in July 2020.
He said the annulment of the party’s November 2023 congress and subsequent congresses meant the CHP could be deemed to have failed to hold its ordinary congresses within the legally required period.
“This is very clear,” Emre said, arguing that if the six-year period expires in July 2026, the party could lose its right to contest elections.
A 2022 amendment to Turkey’s Law on Political Parties changed the rules on election eligibility, stipulating that political parties that fail to hold their district, provincial and grand congresses twice in a row lose their qualification to run in elections.
Emre also said the appeal process could be resolved quickly if there was the political will to clear the way for a congress.
Emre said any legal obstacle to a congress could be removed if the appeal process at Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals is ended, which would make the ruling final and lift the interim measure.
The leadership crisis began on May 21, when the 36th Civil Chamber of the Ankara Regional Court of Justice annulled the CHP’s 38th Ordinary Congress, where Özel defeated Kılıçdaroğlu in November 2023 and became party chairman.
The court ruled that the congress was legally invalid and ordered Kılıçdaroğlu and the party bodies elected under his leadership to return to office as an interim measure. The ruling also temporarily removed Özel and the current party administration from office.
The case concerns allegations of irregularities in the 2023 leadership vote, including claims of vote buying and manipulation. The CHP denies wrongdoing and says the lawsuits are part of a broader judicial campaign to weaken the party after its major gains in the March 2024 local elections.
The CHP has been under growing legal and political pressure since those elections, with more than 20 of its mayors and hundreds of municipal officials detained or arrested in investigations the party says are politically motivated.
İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most prominent political rival and the CHP’s presidential candidate, was arrested in March 2025 on corruption and terrorism-related charges that he denies.
Kılıçdaroğlu led the CHP from 2010 until 2023, when he lost the leadership to Özel after his defeat to Erdoğan in that year’s presidential election. Özel later led the party to its strongest local election result in decades in 2024.
