The Cyprus branch office of Turkish opposition political party the CHP has sided with Ozgur Ozel, with the party and Turkish politics at large now engulfed by a crisis after a court annulled the results of Turkey’s largest opposition political party the CHP’s 2023 party conference and thus removed Ozel from office.
Social media accounts run by the office have continued to repost content published by Ozel alongside its own social media publications in favour of him, while the branch’s youth wing’s chairman Emre Dizel attended a rally held by Ozel in Izmir.
Dizel also attached a photograph of himself meeting Ozel at Rustem’s bookshop in central Nicosia to his Eid al-Adha message.
Ozel and a few thousand of his supporters had defied Izmir’s provincial authorities to hold the rally, with riot fences having been erected to prevent the public from accessing the city’s central Republic Square.
When people nonetheless attempted to gather in the square, police deployed water cannons to disperse the crowds, who then gathered in the nearby Gundogdu Square, with Ozel addressing them from atop a bus lent to him by Muharrem Ince, the CHP’s presidential candidate who had then left the party in 2021, before rejoining last year.
Among the attendees were 19 mayors, with the mayor of Izmir itself Cemil Tugay the most notable of the group.
Ozel told the gathered thousands that “the AK Party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the AK Party’s judicial branches acting on his instructions effectively shut down the CHP”.
“If a party is not governed by its members, delegates, and elected officials, if it is governed by whoever the rival party leader wants, then that political party has effectively ceased to exist,” he said.
He then lamented that following last week’s court ruling, “the CHP, which should be a single entity, is currently divided into two at the behest of the palace”.
“One of these is the appointed CHP. The appointed CHP is in the headquarters which was occupied and seized by the police. The other is the elected CHP, and it is here in this square,” he said.
He also stressed that his removal “is not an internal matter for the CHP”, adding that “anyone who sees it this way is mistaken”, and that “this is not a matter between Kemal and me either”, in reference to Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who was reinstated as CHP leader by the court, having led the party between 2010 and 2023.
“This is a matter between the nation and Tayyip. What is being done is to seize control of the CHP’s rallies, to stop a party … with high energy, many young people and women, which is running towards power,” he said.
He added, “let everyone know, and I am speaking to those who voted for the AK Party … the real issue is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to imprison Ekrem [Imamoglu], the presidential candidate of the party which is marching towards power”.
“The issue is that Tayyip Erdogan is staging a coup against his rival and his party to avoid relinquishing power. Tayyip Erdogan has found a formula: absolute rule over the CHP, absolute rule over Turkey. We will not allow this,” he said.
He then called on Kilicdaroglu to convene an emergency party conference and “allow two million members to vote” within two weeks after the end of the Eid al-Adha holiday, which began on Wednesday.
“I beg you. Do the right thing, listen to the members, listen to the street. Let us eliminate this problem, let this anger end, and be replaced by enthusiasm. Let us all march towards power together,” he said.
Kilicdaroglu, however, was in no mood to expedite the process while speaking to journalists on Wednesday, saying that he will only convene a party conference when all appeals against last week’s court decision are either dropped or exhausted.
He also criticised Ozel and his supporters for having barricaded themselves into the CHP’s headquarters last Friday, saying, “throughout the history of the CHP, no door has ever been closed to a member of parliament”.
Ozel and his supporters were eventually removed from the CHP’s headquarters by riot police, who firing rubber bullets and tear gas at the protesters.
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