Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş resigned from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) on Wednesday, saying he would remain in office as an independent.
His decision came two weeks after a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stirred speculation about his political future.
Yavaş has won two elections for mayor of Turkey’s capital and is seen as a possible presidential challenger to Erdoğan. His departure leaves him outside both sides of a divided opposition at a time when investigations have reached his own municipality and other opposition-run cities.
In a statement on X, Yavaş said “certain statements made today” had prompted him to leave the CHP. He did not identify the speakers or say what they had said.
He also made clear that he was not joining another party. Ankara’s voters had elected him as a CHP candidate, he said, and he would not take their mandate to a party they had not chosen.
Yavaş had remained in the CHP after a court overturned Özgür Özel’s election as chairman at the party’s 2023 congress and reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Özel and 90 lawmakers left to form the New Party. Yavaş sought to keep members of both parties working together on Ankara’s city council.
He said Wednesday that he had warned for months that the leadership fight could divide the opposition and weaken its chances of defeating Erdoğan.
The dispute has unfolded as the CHP faces a wave of investigations into its mayors. İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a leading Erdoğan rival, has been jailed pending trial since March 2025 on corruption charges he denies.
Other opposition mayors have also been arrested. Opposition leaders say the cases are politically motivated; the government denies interfering in the courts.
Several districts won by CHP candidates in 2024 have since come under AKP or government-appointed control after arrests, defections and council votes. In İstanbul’s Üsküdar district, the AKP took control after the elected mayor was jailed, four city council members elected on CHP tickets joined the ruling party and two opposition council members were jailed.
Ankara has faced scrutiny as well. The Interior Ministry authorized an investigation into Yavaş and his chief of staff over their supervision of municipal concert spending.
It later allowed another investigation into allegations that city vehicles were used at a 2023 election rally. Yavaş has called the concert inquiry politically motivated and the municipality denies wrongdoing over the vehicles.
Against that backdrop, Yavaş’s meeting with Erdoğan at the presidential palace on September 9 angered some opposition supporters. Yavaş said he had requested the appointment to discuss metro construction and other Ankara projects. He denied discussing a move to Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Meanwhile, Özel told the T24 news website last week that Yavaş had discussed the visit with him beforehand and that he had no objection to a meeting about metro projects.
He rejected suggestions that the visit signaled a move to the AKP or an end to Yavaş’s presidential prospects, describing Yavaş as an important option if İmamoğlu could not run.
Recent polling helps explain that prospect. In an August survey of 2,000 voters, HBS Research found that 54.8 percent would choose Yavaş and 45.2 percent Erdoğan in a hypothetical two-candidate presidential race.
The survey was conducted before Yavaş announced his resignation.
Reactions and further resignations
Yavaş’s resignation was followed by a wave of departures from the CHP in Ankara, with the mayors of seven districts also announcing that they were leaving the party.
The mayors of Beypazarı, Kalecik, Ayaş, Güdül, Şereflikoçhisar, Elmadağ and Polatlı said they would continue in office as independents, with several explicitly saying they would remain politically aligned with Yavaş.
Ankara Metropolitan Municipality deputy council speaker Ertan Işık also resigned from the CHP and said he would continue his political path alongside the mayor.
New Party’s Özel, said he had called Yavaş after the announcement and wished him well, adding that his party respected whatever decision Yavaş and other mayors chose to make.
“We respect every decision Mansur Yavaş and our mayor friends make,” Özel said, adding that elected mayors were accountable first to the people they served and should not be forced into a particular political choice.
Meanwhile, Kılıçdaroğlu also commented, saying in a statement that he agreed with Yavaş’s emphasis on respecting voters’ choices.
Yavaş had said in his resignation statement that voters cast their ballots not only for an individual but also for a political affiliation, adding, “Loyalty to the will of the voter is the honor of politics.” Kılıçdaroğlu said he fully agreed with that assessment.
Before joining the CHP, Yavaş belonged to the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and served as mayor of Beypazarı, a district of Ankara. He won the capital for the CHP in 2019 and was re-elected in 2024.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
