Turkish police forced the evacuation of the country’s main opposition party headquarters on Sunday, in a dramatic escalation of a legal crackdown on rivals of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ozgur Ozel, leader of the opposition, left the main offices of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in Ankara, after riot police had surrounded then entered the building, firing tear gas in an attempt to force those inside to leave.People inside the building shouted and threw objects at the entrance and police broke through a makeshift barricade. The move came after a court last week annulled the results of a party congress in 2023 that elected Mr Ozel as CHP leader, citing irregularities. Attempts to appeal the decision were rejected and Ankara's governor on Sunday ordered the eviction of those inside the party headquarters.The court ruling, widely criticised as part of democratic backsliding in Turkey, ordered the return of former CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who failed to win any elections in his 13 years heading the country’s main political opposition. He lost a presidential election to Mr Erdogan in 2023 and is widely considered unlikely to defeat him in any future vote. Many observers and CHP supporters in Turkey have criticised what they see as a lacklustre response to the legal action against the party. Mr Ozel, 51, condemned the use of force against a political party and encouraged supporters to take to the streets as he left the CHP building. “Defeat does not become us,” he said. “Losing does not become us.”Riot police clash with supporters of ousted party leader Ozgur Ozel. Getty ImagesInfoFootage broadcast by the pro-opposition Anka and Sozcu TV channels showed Mr Ozel leading a march towards the Turkish parliament building. State broadcaster TRT Haber also reported the news. “After the tension at the CHP HQ evacuation, all eyes are on Kilicdaroglu,” it reported.The scenes shocked many in Turkey. The CHP was established by the founder of the modern Turkish republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a figure revered to this day, and the centrist party is associated with his values of secularism and modernism.Mr Ozel said he was a “rebel” against “those who wish to take over Ataturk’s party and those who wish to hand it over.” Berk Esen, a Turkish academic who follows domestic politics closely, described the “ugly scenes” surrounding the evacuation of the CHP HQ.“A group of approximately 500 people is attempting to seize control of a party with nearly 18 million voters,” he wrote on X. “The ugly scenes we witnessed this morning are a reflection of this stark contrast.”Other political parties also criticised the action at CHP’s offices. Such “repressive methods” were “unacceptable”, said the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party, Turkey’s third biggest political group.The CHP has been under significant legal pressure over the past two years, and hundreds of party members and officials have been arrested in corruption investigations the opposition says are politically motivated. The Turkish government denies those allegations and says the judiciary is independent.Nine people were arrested in Istanbul on Sunday morning over allegations of influencing voter choices during the CHP 2023 congress, according to a statement from the city’s chief prosecutor. The most prominent case is that of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was arrested in March last year on corruption charges and remains in prison. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of more than 2,000 years in prison for the charges against him, all of which he denies.