Ozgur Ozel moves to build new Turkish opposition party after court ouster

Break with the CHP takes shape

Ozgur Ozel, the court-removed leader of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party, announced on July 21, 2026, that he planned to establish a separate political party to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Speaking in parliament to CHP legislators and other officials, Ozel presented the project as a route toward governing Turkey. Reports cited by the Associated Press said the organization was expected to be called Yeni Parti, or New Party, and could be formally launched later that week. Al Jazeera reported that its name had not yet been announced, leaving that detail unconfirmed in the cited accounts.

Ozel said the initiative would begin alongside lawmakers elected by the public. Many of the CHP’s 135 members in Turkey’s 600-seat parliament were expected to transfer to the new organization, according to both reports. Ozel predicted that it would become the main parliamentary opposition by a wide margin.

The announcement followed an appeals court ruling in May that annulled the result of the CHP’s 2023 congress, which had made Ozel chairman. Citing alleged irregularities, the court restored former leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Critics and Ozel described the legal action as politically motivated and part of a wider campaign against the opposition. The government rejected that characterization, saying the courts operate independently. Erdogan called the leadership case an internal CHP dispute and denied government interference in the judiciary.

The proposed party could significantly alter an opposition already under legal and political strain. Investigations, largely involving corruption allegations in CHP-controlled municipalities, have resulted in hundreds of party members and elected officials being detained. Among them is Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, described in the reports as a leading potential challenger to Erdogan. Imamoglu has been imprisoned since March 2025 and faces cases that could bring sentences lasting decades.

Ozel had succeeded Kilicdaroglu after the latter led the CHP for 13 years. During Ozel’s chairmanship, the party made gains against Erdogan’s governing party in the 2024 municipal elections. It won additional cities and reinforced its position in municipalities captured five years earlier, including Istanbul and Ankara.

Whether a new organization would preserve that momentum remained disputed. Some observers argued that moving supporters and legislators away from the CHP could fragment the anti-Erdogan camp. Murat Gezici, chairman of pollster Gezici, told Al Jazeera that the short- and medium-term political arithmetic favored Erdogan and the AK Party unless Ozel’s project generated a strong public response and became the opposition’s principal center.

Ozel’s plan therefore carried two competing possibilities in the cited assessments: consolidating dissatisfied CHP representatives under a new banner or dividing the electoral forces opposing Erdogan. Its immediate parliamentary weight would depend on how many CHP legislators joined after the formal launch.