The National Interest - The Controlled ‘Demolition’ of Turkish Democracy May 28, 2026 By: Robert Ellis

 The National Interest 

The leader of the main Turkish opposition party, CHP, Ozgur Ozel, inaugurates the cultural center named after the late Ferdi Zeyrek, the former mayor of Manisa Metropolitan Municipality in Konak, Izmir, Turkey, on April 3, 2026. The judicial removal of Ozel from leadership of the CHP is another blow to Turkish democracy. (Shutterstock/idiltofolo)

The Controlled ‘Demolition’ of Turkish Democracy

May 28, 2026

By: Robert Ellis

The court order to replace Turkey’s leading opposition party indicates that President Erdogan is stacking the deck for an early election.

Last Thursday’s court order to remove Ozgur Ozel as the elected leader of CHP (Republican People’s Party), Turkey’s secular opposition, and replace him with the party’s former leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is characteristic of the suppression of opposition that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stood for since his AKP (the Justice and Development Party) came to power in 2002.

A disciple of Necmettin Erbakan, the father of political Islam in Turkey, Erdogan continued in his footsteps as mayor of Istanbul in 1994 and made no bones about the fact that democracy was not his aim but the vehicle for his movement. When Erbakan’s Welfare Party was dissolved in 1998 for its challenge to secularism, and Erdogan received a short-term prison sentence, he changed tack.

The AKP, founded in 2001, presented itself as Western, reformist, moderate, and neoliberal, and Turkey’s allies in Europe and the United States bought into the narrative. The start of European Union accession talks in 2005 provided Erdogan with the alibi he needed to send the military back to the barracks and stifle the secular opposition.

Two major elements of Erdogan’s rule have been a showdown with the Kemalist (secular) opposition, which has been the main stumbling block in his attempt to impose Islamist rule on Turkey. The other is the showdown with his former ally, the Turkish imam Fethullah Gülen, whose movement initially provided the educated cadres Erdogan needed.

In the first case,a fictive monster was created, “the Ergenekon terrorist organization,” and inthe Sledgehammer (“Balyoz”) case, a fictive plot by the military to overthrow the government. Prior to the attempted coup in July 2016, the Gülen movement was declared the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) in May. It provided the basis for the subsequent mass arrests and persecution of the movement.

The CHP was founded by Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), together with the Turkish Republic in 1923. The party’s main offense is its overall majority won in Turkey’s local elections in March 2024, which is an obvious threat to Erdogan’s power.

In October last year, the CHP published a comprehensive account of how the AKP government has undermined the party, titled “The Judiciary Against the Ballot Box: The Anatomy of a Coup.” However, Studyo Recap has published a detailed analysis of the way the government has undermined local government since the 2024 elections.

Numerous CHP mayors have been removed from office, charged with corruption, bribery, and embezzlement, notably in Istanbul. Last year, on March 19, Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested and faced a variety of charges, resulting in a total of 2,352 years’ imprisonment. Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor, Akın Gurlek, has since been promoted to Minister of Justice. In several municipalities, mayors from the CHP and pro-Kurdish DEM (Peoples’ Democracy and Equality Party) have been replaced by government trustees, with some of the former mayors accused of terrorism-related charges.

Kilicdaroglu was a lackluster leader of the CHP. In the 13 years he led the party, it failed to win any national elections. A conviction in December 2022 for a remark he made to the press prevented Imamoglu from running in the 2023 presidential election, and Erdogan won. Consequently, Ozgur Ozel was elected leader at the CHP’s ordinary congress in November 2023, and in April last year, he was reelected unopposed at an extraordinary congress.

However, an appeal to annul this congress was rejected by Turkey’s Supreme Election Board (YSK). It should be noted that, under Article 79 of the Turkish Constitution, the final decision on the conduct of elections rests with the YSK. In a second extraordinary congress held in September, Ozel was also reelected unopposed.

The following month, an Ankara criminal court dismissed the case challenging the legitimacy of Ozel’s election, stating it had no legal basis. In June, the AKP’s representative on the Supreme Election Board also stated that the YSK’s decision cannot be overturned by the criminal court of first instance or the high criminal court. “If it does, it will be very, very wrong.”

Therefore, last Thursday’s decision to remove Ozel and his board and reinstate  Kilicdaroglu comes as a bombshell. This move took place shortly before the Eid al-Adha holidays, which had been extended to nine days, to dampen a response.

On Sunday, Kilicdaroglu’s lawyer asked the police to help vacate the CHP’s headquarters, and they forcibly evicted Ozel and his deputies with tear gas and rubber bullets. The day before the court’s decision, Kilicdaroglu had called for the party’s “purification,” and now he signals a purge.

The numbers tell the story. The AKP, together with its Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) ally, commands 322 seats out of the Turkish parliament’s 600. To call an early election, which could give Erdogan a new period as president, or to send a constitutional reform to a referendum, they need 360 seats. Over 400 seats would open the path to unhindered constitutional reform. A deal with the pro-Kurdish DEM and nine other deputies, who sit with 56 seats, could pave the way, but the DEM has just shown its support for Ozel.

As Turkish editor and journalist Yavuz Baydar has concluded in a trenchant analysis, “this is no longer a crisis of democracy; it is its demolition.”

The move comes at an uncertain time for the country’s markets and economy. In March last year, after the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, it cost Turkey’s central bank $50 billion to prop up the lira, and €6 billion on Thursday, following the court ruling. The Iran War has cost around $30 billion to keep the lira stable, and Turkey has started burning through its gold reserves and selling off its US Treasury holdings.

Turkey is still racked by inflation, and the mood is depressed. The question is how much longer the Turkish people are prepared to put up with authoritarian backsliding that has tangible effects on their standard of living.

About the Author: Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis is a Turkey analyst and commentator. He is also an international advisor at RIEAS (Research Institute for European and American Studies) in Athens. He is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press. Earlier, he served as an advisor to the Turkey Assessment Group in the European Parliament and as a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute in New York.

Topic: Foreign Leaders, and Human Rights

Blog Brand: Middle East Watch

Region: Eurasia, and Middle East

Tags: CHP, Democracy, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Ozgur Ozel, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Turkey