Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was undermining democracy through “abusive tactics” against the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkish Minute reported, citing Agence France-Presse.
Thirteen CHP members were detained earlier Saturday in several provinces as part of an investigation into the party’s 2023 leadership congress, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said.
The investigation led Thursday to a court ruling that removed the party’s leadership, prosecutors said.
Human Rights Watch called the ruling “the latest deeply damaging blow to the rule of law, democracy and human rights” in Turkey.
The group said the move was part of “the ongoing abusive tactics by the Erdoğan government to remove the CHP as a political force.”
Turkish authorities last year jailed İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival and the CHP’s candidate for the presidential election scheduled for 2028.
Thousands of people protested in Ankara and İstanbul on Friday against the court order, which annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership election over alleged vote buying.
The ruling cancelled the victory of CHP leader Özgür Özel and named former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as interim leader.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who led the CHP for years, lost several elections to Erdoğan before being unseated by Özel at the party congress in November 2023.
