Turkey opposition calls extraordinary congress for Sept 21

ISTANBUL (AFP): Turkey’s main opposition party has announced it will hold an extraordinary congress on September 21 after a court ousted its Istanbul leadership on graft allegations, party officials said on Saturday.

The decision comes amid growing political pressure on the Republican People’s Party (CHP) after a court this week annulled the outcome of its Istanbul provincial congress in October 2023, throwing out its leader Ozgur Celik and 195 others.

More than 900 CHP delegates on Friday submitted a petition to a local election board in the capital Ankara to authorise the congress, a party source told AFP.

The congress is expected to shape the party’s strategy as it faces legal uncertainty.

CHP leader Ozgur Ozel described the move as “entirely a technical and legal manouevre” in case a court delivers a similar verdict to oust the overall party leadership in a hearing on September 15.

“Because, as you know, anything is within the realm of possibility,” he said.

The CHP, the largest opposition force in the Turkish parliament, won a huge victory over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP in the 2024 local elections.

Since then, the party has become a target of a wave of arrests and legal cases that culminated in March with the jailing of Istanbul’s popular and powerful mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on corruption allegations that he denies.

The arrest and jailing of Imamoglu, seen as a key rival to Erdogan, sparked street protests unprecedented in a decade.

Authorities have clamped down on demonstrations detaining nearly 2,000 people including students and journalists — most of whom were later released.

On Tuesday, the court ousted the CHP Istanbul leader and scores of party delegates and named a five-man team to replace them in a move that saw the stock market plunge 5.5 percent.

The CHP has filed an appeal against the ruling.

Political analyst Berk Esen told AFP the move was a “rehearsal” for the bigger case against the party’s national leadership seeking to hobble it as an opposition force.

-‘CHP stands tall’-

An almost identical lawsuit is hanging over its national leadership in a closely-watched case that will resume in Ankara on September 15.

A petition of over 900 party delegates demanding an extraordinary congress raised within just a day and a half comes against the possibility of a similar court ruling, observers say.

CHP leader Ozel said should an Ankara court deliver a ruling that affects the party’s leadership, and appoint a trustee to replace him, “that trustee, I must point out with all due respect, would last no more than six days.”

Because, he added, six days later, the party “naturally and inevitably, reinstates its elected leader” at the congress.

Gul Ciftci, a CHP deputy leader responsible for election and legal affairs, said the extraordinary congress “will not only determine the future of our party but will also reaffirm faith in pluralism, diversity, and democratic politics in Turkey,” in a comment on X on Friday.

She hailed the decision for the congress, made with the delegates’ will, as “the strongest proof that the CHP stands tall against all attempts at intervention by the government”.

The party source told AFP that to boost the chances of the request for an extraordinary congress being accepted, signatures were not collected from the 196 Istanbul delegates who were suspended by the court order.