Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit, deputy group chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), has denounced the deepening crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), saying the government is trying to sideline its rivals ahead of future elections, Turkish Minute reported.
Scenes seen as part of a wider crackdown on democracy unfolded at the İstanbul provincial headquarters of the CHP earlier this week, when Gürsel Tekin, a longtime party figure recently appointed by a court as head of a caretaker board, entered the building under police escort. His arrival triggered scuffles with rival CHP members and police, who used tear gas. An Agence France-Presse correspondent reported that several people fainted and required medical treatment and that between 10 and 20 people were detained.
The development was the latest chapter in a sweeping crackdown targeting the CHP, which has seen more than 500 people linked to the party or the İstanbul Municipality detained or arrested since March. At least 15 opposition mayors are currently behind bars, while elected officials in several municipalities have been replaced with government-appointed trustees.
Speaking at a press conference in parliament, Koçyiğit said the court decision that installed Tekin as caretaker of the CHP’s İstanbul branch was part of a series of “judicial operations” that have intensified since late last year. “We are facing judicial operations. … These interventions damage the political ground and also harm the ongoing process,” she said.
Saying that subjecting the main opposition to court-appointed trustees amounted to rejecting the will of the people, Koçyiğit added, “This is actually the result of not recognizing the people’s will. By insisting on unlawful methods, the government is dragging the country into this situation.”
Koçyiğit recalled that the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the predecessor of the DEM Party, had faced similar repression, with dozens of mayors removed and replaced by government trustees since 2016, while former co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ remain imprisoned. She noted that they had long warned that these actions were aimed not just at one party but at “all the peoples of Turkey” and at the country’s electoral democracy.
She stressed that the DEM Party’s position was principled, saying, “When it was done to us, we opposed it. Today it is being done to the CHP, we oppose it. Tomorrow if it is done to another party or another group, we will stand against it as well.”
Turning to the government, she said the stance it has taken toward the opposition was “problematic and unlawful.” According to Koçyiğit, opposition parties are competitors, not “enemies to be liquidated by judicial means.”
“This enemy politics must end, and the judiciary must no longer be used as a tool to design politics,” she added.
DEM Party co-chairs visit CHP leader in İstanbul
DEM Party Co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan on Thursday visited CHP leader Özgür Özel at his working office in İstanbul’s Sarıyer district. The building, previously the CHP’s provincial headquarters, was re-designated as Özel’s office after the court’s appointment of the caretaker board and police blockaded the site. The barricades were lifted shortly before the meeting.
Bakırhan said the meeting was not just a courtesy call but also “a show of common will against unlawful, anti-democratic practices.”
“We are against trustees being imposed on the people’s will. These unlawful practices will be met with solidarity with the CHP. … The government must stop targeting elected mayors and respect the right to vote and be elected.”
Özel thanked the DEM delegation for their support, stressing that the CHP would resist efforts to sideline it. “We are standing tall. … They cannot turn us into His Majesty’s opposition party,” he said, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The İstanbul 45th Civil Court of First Instance’s decision to annul the 2023 provincial congress of the CHP, removing provincial chairman Özgür Çelik and 195 board members and appointing Tekin as interim leader, comes less than a week before a high-stakes hearing in Ankara on September 15, where a civil court will resume a case seeking to annul the CHP’s November 2023 national congress that brought Özel to the leadership. A ruling against the congress could strip Özel of his chairmanship, appoint a trustee to run the party or order a new congress.
The CHP, which won Turkey’s biggest cities in the 2024 local elections and is polling ahead of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has faced intensifying legal pressure. Since March, when İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was jailed on corruption and terrorism-linked charges, at least 15 CHP mayors have been arrested in nationwide investigations that rights groups describe as politically motivated.
