Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pinned the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) badge on İstanbul lawmaker Nimet Özdemir, who recently resigned from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), as the party faces internal turmoil and a series of operations targeting CHP-run municipalities, Turkish Minute reported, citing the Anka news agency.
Özdemir joined the AKP during the party’s parliamentary group meeting on Wednesday.
Asked by reporters before the meeting about her decision to switch parties, she said: “I am the same Nimet. Nothing has changed. I will continue the same mission.”
Özdemir, who had joined the CHP about two years ago after being elected to parliament from the İYİ (Good) Party, did not publicly explain her reason for leaving the CHP and closed her social media accounts after her resignation.
She is the latest politician to leave the CHP and join Erdoğan’s party at a time when Turkey’s oldest political party is facing both a leadership crisis and growing judicial pressure following its sweeping victory in the March 31, 2024, local elections.
The CHP has been facing repeated police operations and investigations targeting its municipalities, particularly in İstanbul and other opposition-run districts since October 2024.
Hundreds of CHP mayors, municipal officials and employees have been detained and arrested in the probes involving allegations such as corruption, bid rigging and links to terrorism.
The most high-profile case involves İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP’s declared presidential candidate and widely seen as Erdoğan’s strongest potential rival at the ballot box.
İmamoğlu has been imprisoned since March 2025, when his arrest triggered Turkey’s largest street protests since the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations.
The arrests have unfolded along with a wave of defections from the CHP to Erdoğan’s ruling party, fueling opposition claims that judicial pressure and party-switching are part of the same effort to weaken the CHP after its 2024 local election gains.
On Monday Levent Koç, the CHP mayor of Haymana, a district of Ankara, resigned from the party and joined the AKP hours later. Erdoğan pinned the AKP badge on Koç at the same meeting.
Since the 2024 local elections, at least 17 mayors elected from the CHP — one metropolitan mayor, one provincial mayor, 13 district mayors and two town mayors — have switched to the AKP, according to Turkish media reports.
With Özdemir’s move, two lawmakers have crossed directly from the CHP to the AKP since the local elections.
The total number of lawmakers who entered parliament from opposition lists and later joined the AKP is higher.
The defections come as the CHP has been in turmoil since a May 21 court decision annulled the party’s 2023 congress, removed Özgür Özel and the current party leadership and reinstated former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his team.
The ruling deepened an already tense power struggle inside the CHP, which had defeated the AKP in major cities and many municipalities in the 2024 local elections.
Critics and rights groups described the court intervention as part of a growing campaign to weaken Turkey’s main opposition party, while the government claims that the judiciary acts independently.
