# Tens of thousands rally in Ankara as Turkey opposition faces court hearing
Event date: 2025-09-14
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Ankara on Sunday to protest a widening legal crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition party and to call for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to resign.
The rally took place on the eve of a court hearing that could remove Ozgur Ozel, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, from his post. Ozel told the crowd the case was part of a “judicial coup” against the opposition. Live footage from Tandogan Square showed protesters waving Turkish flags and party banners while chanting against Erdogan.
CHP vice-president Murat Bakan said the rally drew 50,000 people. While that figure came from the party rather than an official count, the size of the demonstration reflected the level of anger surrounding the case. Ozel used his speech to argue that the government does not want genuine democracy and cannot win elections under fair conditions. He described the hearing as political and said the allegations against the party were slander.
The immediate trigger is a court case seeking to overturn the results of a CHP congress held in November 2023 on allegations of vote-rigging. That congress elected Ozel as party leader. Critics argue the proceedings are designed to weaken Turkey’s oldest political party after it won a major victory over Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in the 2024 local elections and has been rising in opinion polls.
The crackdown has not been limited to one hearing. According to the report, hundreds of CHP members have been jailed on corruption and terrorism accusations, including Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan’s main political rival. Imamoglu’s arrest in March triggered Turkey’s biggest unrest in a decade, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets.
Sunday’s rally therefore became more than a single protest. It served as a public show of resistance to a broader legal and political campaign that CHP leaders say is aimed at undermining the party’s ability to compete. Ozel told the crowd that the government was choosing repression over the ballot box.
The court hearing on Monday will now determine whether the challenge to the CHP congress can proceed in a way that changes the party’s leadership. If it does, the case could deepen an already severe confrontation between Turkey’s governing camp and the opposition.
For Erdogan’s critics, the imagery from Ankara was the point: a mass crowd in a major square, party flags aloft, and a direct call for the president to go. For the government, the legal case remains framed as a judicial matter. The confrontation between those two interpretations is now moving into the courtroom.
