The Cyprus branch of Turkish opposition party the CHP has defected to the new party formed by its former leader Ozgur Ozel, which he has named the New Party, following 91 members of parliament and numerous mayors across the country who have joined the party.
On Monday, the now former chairman of the CHP’s Cyprus branch Mustafa Yurukcu announced that he had left the CHP to join the New Party, saying that “I am resigning from the CHP, our ancestral home and the great family to which we belong, with the ideal of a better country in mind”.
“There is much to say, but it is time to speak of something better, with what is in our hearts and on our lips. It is easy for a poet to say that yesterday is in the past, but it leaves our hearts bleeding. Whatever happens, we say hello to a new page, a new day, hope, and the continued fight,” he said.
Earlier, social media pages belonging to the CHP’s Cyprus branch had rebranded themselves as the New Party’s Cyprus branch, while the now former Cyprus branch youth wing chairman of the CHP, Emre Dizel, has also joined the New Party.
Despite having only officially having been formed last Friday, the New Party is already Turkey’s official opposition, with its 91MPs more than any other party in the Turkish parliament except for the ruling AK Party.
The CHP is now the fifth largest party in the Turkish parliament, with 44 MPs, and has lost its place as the official opposition and the second-largest party in parliament for the first time since 2002.
Additionally, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the man installed as CHP leader in Ozgur Ozel’s stead by a court decision in May, has become the first person in the history of the Turkish republic to preside over a party losing its position as the official opposition without an election being held.
The local CHP’s defection to the New Party will likely arrest a steady rise in the CHP’s popularity among Turkish citizens living in Cyprus, with the CHP having won more votes than any other party among voters in Cyprus at the last Turkish parliamentary election, held in May 2023.
In total, the CHP won 35.2 per cent of the vote, with the AK Party taking 30.1 per cent of the vote, and Devlet Bahceli’s MHP, which caucuses with the AK Party in parliament, taking 7.3 per cent of the vote on the island. That result had been the best in Cyprus for the CHP – and the worst for the AK Party – in over a decade.
Likewise, initial polling conducted over the weekend across Turkey has the New Party ahead of the CHP nationwide, with the former finding itself in second place and the latter in third place, both behind the AK Party.
Ozel had been elected as CHP leader in the autumn of 2023 after Kilicdaroglu had been defeated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in that year’s presidential election and led the party to second place in the simultaneous parliamentary election.
He then oversaw in 2024 the party’s best local election results since 1977, when it was led by Bulent Ecevit, retaining the mayoralties of the key cities of Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, and taking Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city, as well as Adiyaman, Afyon, Balikesir, Denizli, Giresun, and Zonguldak from the AK Party.
However, problems began to arise last year when Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu had his degree revoked by the Istanbul University and was then arrested, accused of having “led a criminal organisation” among a litany of other charges.
Imamoglu was selected as the CHP’s candidate for the next presidential election, though it is a requirement for Turkish presidents to have a valid university degree.
In July last year, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison for “insulting and threatening” Akin Gurlek, who was at the time Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor, but was in February this year appointed as Turkey’s justice minister.
The CHP continued regardless thereafter, insisting that Imamoglu was its presidential candidate, but ground to a halt in May this year when a court annulled the results of the party’s 2023 conference, removing Ozel from office.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who had led the party between 2010 and 2023, was installed as party leader by the court, with Ozel immediately demanding that a fresh party conference be held so as to reset matters and to allow the party’s membership to elect its leader.
However, Kilicdaroglu chose not to heed those calls, and Ozel created the New Party on Friday.
“Having exhausted all legal avenues and rendered an internal political fight possible, we embarked on this path, called upon to do so by the people and the streets,” he said, before setting his sights on forming a government after the next election.
He said that the New Party will “serve as the main opposition party for a period until the next election”.
“This will be the first and only year in which the New Party participates in budget discussions while in opposition. Then, with God’s permission and the people’s approval, we will establish a government which will bring smiles to the faces of the people, solve their problems, an bring peace, prosperity, and tranquillity to the country,” he said.
The next Turkish elections must take place on or before May 7, 2028, though it is believed that they may take place sooner than that date.
This is because under Turkey’s current constitution, incumbent President Erdogan cannot run for re-election as Turkey’s president if the next election is held at the end of his currently foreseen term, but if the country’s parliament calls an election ahead of time, his current term will not be considered fulfilled, and he will be able to stand again.
The consent of 60 per cent of Turkey’s 600-member parliament – 360 MPs – would be required for such an election to be held. At present, Erdogan’s government commands the support of 328 MPs – 277 from his own party, 46 from the ultranationalist MHP, four from the Kurdish Islamist Huda Par, and the vote of Onder Aksakal.
On this front, it has been rumoured that the AK Party may use the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its founding, August 14, to call snap parliamentary and presidential elections.
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