Özgür Özel, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), says the Turkish government has replaced its old focus on cracking down Kurds with a new pressure campaign aimed at his party, Turkish Minute reported.
The CHP is Turkey’s oldest political party and the largest opposition group in parliament.
The remarks came amid what the CHP calls a “judicial coup” following its sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections.
Özel met with a group of journalists in Ankara and said in remarks reported by Murat Sabuncu, a columnist for the T24 news website, that the Turkish government once treated Kurds as a threat but now directs the same approach toward the opposition.
Kurds in Turkey make up the largest minority group and have long reported discrimination by state institutions.
Özel told journalists that this shift shows that the government has created a system that labels different groups as enemies depending on political need.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and people inside the state apparatus who support him want to block any political movement that can win power, the CHP leader was cited as telling journalists.
He says these groups now target the CHP because jailed İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu poses the strongest electoral challenge to the president.
İmamoğlu faces a major criminal case that includes corruption charges which he and the CHP say are politically motivated.
The recently released İmamoğlu indictment also hints at a possible closure case against the CHP that would allow the country’s top court to dissolve the party.
Özel said this possibility convinced him that the goal is to weaken the opposition in the same way earlier governments restricted Kurdish political groups.
Stating that the current pressure comes through the courts, Özel labeled it as a system ruled by judges rather than elected officials.
The CHP will continue outreach to Kurdish voters and will not allow the government to divide opposition groups, according to Özel.
The CHP will present new policy plans at its November convention and will prepare for the elections despite the pressure, T24 cited Özel as saying.
The remarks came amid what the CHP calls a “judicial coup” following its sweeping victory in the March 2024 local elections.
In an October report titled “Judiciary Against the Ballot Box: The Anatomy of a Coup,” the party said 16 CHP mayors remain in jail and 13 municipalities have been taken over by government-appointed trustees.
The report documents hundreds of arrests of opposition mayors and officials on corruption or terrorism-related charges, claiming that the government has turned the judiciary into a political weapon to reverse its electoral losses.
