Turkey's ousted opposition leader Ozgur Ozel on Wednesday said he would not be leaving the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP) and called for party members to vote for a new leader.
Meanwhile, the CHP's interim leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said that the party should hold a conference where delegates pick a new leader, saying there was "no alternative" to this course of action. Why is there a leadership dispute in Turkey's main opposition party?
Last week, a Turkish court annulled the results of the CHP's 2023 leadership primary vote that elected Ozel as leader. The ruling reinstated his defeated rival Kilicdaroglu.
It represented the latest in a string of legal setbacks for the opposition CHP and its leading figures, which its supporters allege are part of a coordinated plot orchestrated by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to hobble the opposition. The government rejects such claims.
Ozel's prominence has grown since the 2025 arrest of the CHP's previous designated presidential candidate Ekrem ImamogluImage: CHP/Depo Photos/Sipa USA/picture alliance
