CHP repression: Turkey slides towards one-party rule

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On May 21, an appeals court in Ankara cancelednearly three years after the 2023 leadership elections of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). This effectively removed party leader Ozgur Ozel and the party’s elected leaders, weakening the CHP’s ability to run against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the impending elections. This latest intervention in Turkish political and judicial institutions highlights that democratic backsliding no longer constitutes an adequate description of Turkey’s trajectory; this process has largely come to an end. What is unfolding now is a more consequential phase: Turkey is moving beyond democratic erosion and moving toward the institutionalization of authoritarian rule.

Shortly after the 2023 CHP congress, former Hatay Mayor Lutfu Savas – who had been a member of Erdogan’s AKP before joining the CHP – and several former CHP delegates claimed that some delegates had been lured to vote by financial incentives, benefits, or promises of political appointments. On this basis, they filed civil suits seeking to cancel the convention, arguing that the voting process had been unduly influenced and that the election of the party leadership was therefore invalid. The 42nd Ankara Civil Court initially rejected requests for annulment, finding that the allegations were not supported by sufficient concrete evidence to affect the outcome of the election and that the case had effectively become moot. The Ankara Regional Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s decision. He canceled the 2023 congress and all subsequent congresses and decisions, suspended Ozgur Ozel and the current leadership, and ordered the restoration of the pre-congress leadership under Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists the government has nothing to do with the legal proceedings, describing the matter as an internal CHP matter and noting that the plaintiffs themselves are party members. However, the prospect of dismissing a leadership team that elevated the CHP to the rank of 35 percent in polls – overtaking Erdogan’s AKP – and replacing it with former leader Kemal Kılıcdaroglu, who lost 12 consecutive elections For Erdogan, it’s an outcome that seems remarkably practical in the run-up to national elections scheduled for 2028, or even sooner. In a country where judicial independence has been significantly eroded, few will view the timing or consequences of the case as a coincidence.

Pro-Kurdish parties in Turkey have long been targets of state efforts to marginalize Kurdish political demands and limit their influence within the country’s political system. After the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) revolutionary performance During the June 2015 elections, the AKP government responded by dismantling the party’s political gains. Thousands of party officials were arrested, dozens of elected mayors were removed and replaced by state-appointed administrators, and party co-chairs were imprisoned. A decade later, the government is pursuing a peace process with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and hopes it will deter the HDP’s successor, the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), from confronting the government’s assault on the main opposition party. So far, this strategy has not worked. The DEM party was the first opposition party to visit Ozgur Ozel and express solidarity following the court decision.

Much like the HDP before it, the CHP was targeted by Erdogan after it began performing well in elections. After the CHP’s victories in major cities like Istanbul and Ankara in the 2019 municipal elections, the founding party of the Turkish Republic finds itself increasingly in Erdogan’s crosshairs. The most prominent example is Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor who won Istanbul in 2019 and 2024 and has become the opposition’s most likely presidential challenger to Erdogan. The stakes are particularly high because the upcoming presidential election will determine not only who will govern Turkey once Erdogan reaches his constitutional term limit, but also whether he can find a path (legal or otherwise) to extend his rule or install a loyal successor who can shield him from legal and political liability once he leaves office. Since March 2025, Imamoglu was imprisoned on false accusations linked to corruption and terrorism, which even Leading figures of the AKP in the media they have difficulty defending themselves.

After taking over the leadership of the CHP, Ozgur Ozel distinguished himself from the CHP leaders that Turkey has become accustomed to over the past two decades. In Turkey’s generally illiberal political landscape, Ozel has established himself as a true defender of civil liberties and democratic norms. His predecessors, the late Deniz Baykal and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, often followed the familiar pattern of prioritizing state interests and nationalist reflexes when Erdogan opposed Kurdish political actors and dissent, both within Turkey and beyond its borders. Ozel, in contrast, took a more consistent rights-based approach, including criticize Erdogan for not doing enough and dragging its feet in the ongoing peace process between Turkey and the PKK.

Ozel’s leadership has been instrumental in increasing CH’s electoral appeal to a level that poses a real threat to AKP power for the first time in more than two decades. Under his leadership, the party has evolved beyond its traditional coastal, urban, secular base, making significant inroads among rural and religiously conservative voters who have long been considered the cornerstone of AKP support. Just as importantly, the CHP has demonstrated an increasing ability to coordinate with the pro-Kurdish DEM party at critical political moments, helping to forge a broader opposition coalition. Together, these developments transformed the CHP from a perennial opposition force into a credible contender for national power. It is precisely for this reason that targeting individual opposition figures is no longer enough for the current Turkish president. By overturning the result of the 2023 CHP congress and restoring the party’s previous leadership, Erdogan appears determined to reshape the CHP into a weaker, more predictable version of itself – one less capable of mounting a serious challenge in the next presidential election. Who better to do that than a guy who’s already lost twelve?

Kilicdaroglu has already expressed his willingness to accept such a result. Three days after the judgment, he remained there riot police were forcibly removed Ozgur Ozel from the CHP headquarters and escorted Kilicdaroglu’s team into the building. In one of his first statements after being reinstated as party leader, Kilicdaroglu did not commit to an immediate extraordinary congress this would allow party members to choose their direction again. Instead, he spoke of the need to “purify the party” of corruption, language that suggests he may seek to consolidate his position before returning the question of leadership to party delegates. For a politician who has spent much of his career criticizing Erdogan’s influence on the judiciary, adopting a court decision that so effectively advances his own political prospects is, at best, deeply ironic and, at worst, deeply cynical.

Having lit the fire, Erdogan is now taking advantage, as the CHP is drawn into a debilitating internal struggle rather than challenging the government’s political and economic mismanagement, which has fueled inflation, weakened the rule of law, and deepened concerns about Turkey’s economic future. Although Erdogan has often succeeded in dividing opposition parties and preventing them from coming together into a lasting political coalition, this is the first time he appears willing to rethink the main opposition party from within. This decision reflects both his concern about the sustainability of his political domination and the extraordinary degree of influence he now exercises over the institutions of the Turkish state.

Turkey’s political trajectory has come full circle. The republic began as a one-party state, transitioned to multi-party politics with the country’s first competitive elections in 1946, and maintained for decades a system in which governments could be elected and removed from office despite periodic military interventions and persistent democratic shortcomings. Under Erdogan, however, Turkey has gradually moved toward a system characterized by elections that have remained largely free but increasingly unfair, with opposition parties competing on an uneven playing field shaped by government control of the media, the judiciary and state institutions. The latest intervention in the CHP’s internal affairs suggests that even this model could give way to something more restrictive. If the state can determine not only who governs but also who leads the opposition, Turkey risks returning to a de facto one-party system – one in which elections continue to be held, but the possibility of genuine political alternation becomes increasingly remote.