Kilis Mayor Hakan Bilecen, elected from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has resigned from the party, saying promises made to him were not kept and that he will continue in office as an independent, Turkish Minute reported.
Bilecen’s resignation, announced in a video he shared on X on Friday, came weeks after he denied claims that he was planning to leave the CHP and join President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Bilecen, who was elected mayor in the March 31, 2024, local elections with 41.97 percent of the vote, claimed that internal disputes within the CHP had been used as an excuse and that promises made to him had not been fulfilled.
“Except for Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, I received no support from any municipality,” Bilecen said. “Since I took office, I have gone door to door but received no results. There was always an excuse and a reason. These reasons multiplied.”
Bilecen was referring to the ongoing legal and political disputes inside the CHP, including the case seeking the annulment of the party’s congress, the subsequent change in the party leadership and arguments over who the party’s official and unofficial chairman was.
“We have grown tired of this situation,” he said. “We want to set the Kilis Municipality apart from the political turmoil inside the Republican People’s Party and in the country.”
Bilecen said he would continue serving as an independent mayor.
“In order to focus on better services for Kilis and protect my city and municipality from political disputes, I made a decision after long consultations,” he said. “I believe this is the right decision for now. I will continue on my path as an independent mayor. I thank every member of the Republican People’s Party.”
Bilecen said he had made the decision because he believed it was right and would benefit Kilis, rejecting any other motive for his resignation.
Journalist İsmail Saymaz said on X that Bilecen had told him he resigned because he could not receive support from the CHP and was unable to provide services to Kilis.
“He said he left together with seven or eight city council members, that he would remain independent for a while and that he would have talks, including with the AKP,” Saymaz added.
Saymaz also noted that Umut Mehmet Sapan, the CHP’s Kilis provincial chairman, had recently resigned after being released from pretrial detention.
Bilecen’s resignation is the latest development to raise concerns about the CHP’s control of municipalities it won in the March 31, 2024, local elections, when the party achieved a nationwide plurality for the first time in decades and took control of many large cities and provincial municipalities.
His move also follows a series of defections by mayors elected from the CHP or other opposition parties after the 2024 local elections.
Last month Afyonkarahisar Mayor Burcu Köksal, who was elected from the CHP in 2024, joined the AKP at a ceremony in Ankara where Erdoğan pinned an AKP badge on her. Köksal’s move gave the ruling party control of another municipality that voters had handed to the opposition.
At least 14 mayors elected from the CHP had joined the AKP before Köksal’s move, including Aydın Metropolitan Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu, one of the most prominent local government figures in western Turkey, along with district and town mayors from Aydın, Gaziantep, Yalova, Konya, Ardahan, Antalya, Şırnak, Çorum and Niğde.
The defections have unfolded alongside a crackdown on CHP-run municipalities that began in October 2024 and intensified after the March 2025 jailing of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival.
Rights groups and opposition politicians say the judiciary has been used to weaken the CHP through criminal investigations, detentions, arrests and removals of elected mayors, while the government insists the courts act independently.
The CHP says investigations targeting its municipalities are politically motivated and aimed at rolling back the opposition’s local election gains.
