The irreversible split within the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) amid a legal gridlock is both the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning for Özgür Özel. Boasting a rare success for his party in the 2024 municipal elections, the former pharmacist who made his real foray into politics only in 2009 may finally have a party truly his own. The question now is whether he will be as popular as the chair of Türkiye’s oldest party.
Özel publicly vowed to stay in CHP until the very end and he was the “last man standing” when lawyers of reinstated Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu arrived at the party’s headquarters with an eviction notice and the company of police squads. As his supporters resisted the eviction by setting up barricades and spraying police with fire extinguishers, Özel emerged hours later from his office, leaving the building in a calm manner but with a grim face. He repeatedly called CHP “father’s abode,” an affectionate description for the family home in Anatolia.
He initially opposed the idea of forming a new party with his supporters, which allegedly outnumber those of Kılıçdaroğlu, but as his options are exhausting, he started voicing the idea more and more in recent days.
