By Huseyin Hayatsever
ANKARA, July 21 (Reuters) – Turkey’s opposition leader, Ozgur Ozel, said on Tuesday he will resign from the main opposition party and form a new one, amid a nearly two-year long legal crackdown on President Tayyip Erdogan’s political opponents.
The move, which was expected, poses the latest challenge for the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP), which modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had established more than a century ago.
Most CHP voters and parliamentarians are expected to follow Ozel to the unnamed new party, after a court in May stripped him of his title as chairman by annulling the CHP’s 2023 congress.
In a fiery speech in parliament, Ozel said the resignation of his team from the CHP did not mean they were succumbing to political pressure, but rather that they were embarking on a new kind of opposition to Erdogan, who has run Turkey for more than two decades.
“Today, we are on the brink of a sad farewell that has become inevitable and whose time has come. However, we would like to share with the people that we carry the hope of a new beginning,” Ozel said to more than 80 CHP lawmakers.
The May court decision cited irregularities in the CHP congress and reinstated as chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the former leader who lost to Erdogan in the 2023 presidential election.
Ozel and critics called the ruling a politically motivated “coup” amid an unprecedented legal crackdown on the CHP that saw Istanbul Mayor and Erdogan’s main political rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, arrested last year.
The government denies such assertions, saying the judiciary is independent. But the crackdown has rattled financial markets and fueled concerns about democracy and the rule of law in Turkey.
The opposition’s crisis could boost Erdogan’s prospects of extending his rule of the NATO-member country in an election scheduled to be held by 2028, but which analysts say could come earlier if the government seeks to take advantage of the CHP strife.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer )
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