What to Know About Türkiye’s Deepening Democratic Crisis

Chad de Guzman

Riot police stormed the headquarters of Türkiye’s main opposition party on Sunday to evict its ousted leadership, testing the country’s fragile democracy.

Tear gas and rubber bullets were fired inside the headquarters of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in Ankara, where party officials and supporters, including leader Özgür Özel, were holed up for days. Footage from local media showed police breaking through a makeshift barricade. 

The standoff between the CHP and Turkish police comes days after a court nullified Özel’s 2023 election as chairperson of the party, in what the Human Rights Watch has claimed to be an attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government to “sideline the main political opposition in ways that profoundly undermine civil and political rights and Türkiye’s democratic process.”

With Özel as leader, the CHP massively outperformed Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2024 municipal elections. But the opposition has since faced a political crackdown, including the arrest of a key Erdoğan rival, and the suspension and detention of CHP-affiliated local government officials.

The opposition similarly claimed that the court intervention and its subsequent violent enforcement at its headquarters were a politically motivated attempt to undermine it. “We are under attack,” Özel said in a video message he posted on X, as Turkish police forced their way in. The CHP claimed their only “crime” was besting Erdoğan’s and becoming the leading party for the first time in decades.

Özel later emerged from the building and led a march with CHP supporters toward the Parliament building, some 6 km (4 mi) away. “We will take back our headquarters, of course, we will take back our paternal home,” he told the supporters, according to local news agency T24. “Until that day, we are in the squares, we are in the streets.”

Here’s what to know about what’s happening in Türkiye.

What triggered the standoff?

On May 21, a Turkish appeals court made a rare move to overturn the results of an internal CHP leadership election in 2023 that Özel had won. The court annulled the CHP’s 2023 Congress, overturning a lower court’s verdict last year against claims of irregularities surrounding Özel’s election.

The ruling suspended Özel and members of the party’s executive board, and it provisionally installed Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, 77, who led the CHP from 2010 to 2023. 

Under Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP failed to win national elections. Kılıçdaroğlu’s string of election losses prompted Ekrem İmamoğlu, a prominent CHP figure and Istanbul’s mayor who was seen as a key rival to Erdoğan, to lead a change in party leadership. İmamoğlu backed Özel, who was elected the party’s leader in November 2023. But former and current members within the CHP opposed to Özel’s leadership questioned his victory, and prosecutors alleged that Özel secured his victory by buying votes.

Following the ruling, Kılıçdaroğlu, in a statement on social media, said that the CHP was “not a battleground for personal ambitions” and that the ruling “should not be an occasion for division, but an opportunity to unite.”

Özel and his party allies said they will appeal the court ruling, which threatens the CHP’s chances of defeating Erdoğan, who has been in power for more than two decades. After the ruling, crowds reportedly gathered outside the CHP headquarters, and members held meetings about a way forward. A presidential election isn’t due until 2028, but Erdoğan can call for an early one.

Özel and Kılıçdaroğlu’s factions were due to meet on Sunday to iron out differences, but representatives for Kılıçdaroğlu wrote to Ankara’s police seeking intervention. In a copy of the memo to police that local outlet Medyascope obtained, Kılıçdaroğlu’s representative requested the police carry out “necessary procedures” to enforce the ruling and make the Özel-led faction vacate the CHP headquarters. The provincial governor approved the move.

As Özel left the party headquarters, T24 reported that chanters outside yelled, “Fallen Kemal,” “Traitor Kemal,” and “Kılıçdaroğlu is the hope of the AKP.”

The CHP’s role in Türkiye

The CHP is a center-left socialist party first established in 1923 by Türkiye’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. A military coup in 1980 closed down several political parties, including the CHP, but after the ban was lifted, the CHP was reopened in 1992.

The CHP, which was unpopular in the 1990s but improved its image in recent years, owing largely to the administrative performance of its affiliated local government officials like Istanbul’s İmamoğlu, has posed a threat to Erdoğan’s AKP after edging it out in local elections in 2024.  

İmamoğlu, who was nominated via a primary to be the opposition candidate in the next presidential election, has been imprisoned since March 2025 and is on trial for corruption charges. If convicted, he could receive as much as a 2,000-year prison sentence. İmamoğlu’s arrest sparked widespread protests, which the Erdoğan Administration similarly suppressed. 

CHP-linked mayors of other cities have also faced corruption allegations, and several remain jailed in what observers say is an attempt to curb the party’s gains. 

Read More: Why Turkey’s Pro-Democracy Protests Probably Won’t Succeed

Some observers say Erdoğan, who has been accused of embracing authoritarianism since coming to power in 2003, could take advantage of the fomenting split in the CHP to call for new elections. Presidents for Türkiye are limited to two terms, though Erdoğan can secure another five-year term if an early election is called.

The Justice Ministry under Erdoğan asserts that the change in CHP leadership “reinforced citizens’ trust in democracy.” (Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, who was appointed to the post in February, previously led the probe into İmamoğlu as Istanbul’s former chief prosecutor.)

En route to Türkiye’s Grand National Assembly on Sunday, Özel spoke to supporters in the National Sovereignty Park, and urged them to support another reestablishment of the party.