Ankara Court Temporarily Removes CHP Leadership, Reinstates Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu

An Ankara appellate court has, by interim order, removed the leadership of Türkiye’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, voided the party congress that brought Özgür Özel to power in 2023, and reinstated former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu pending further appeals.

The ruling, issued May 21 by the 36th Civil Chamber of the Ankara Regional Court of Appeal, declared the CHP’s Nov. 4-5, 2023 congress invalid and treated later 2025 party congresses that re-elected Özel as invalid as well. In effect, the court said the 2023 congress was void from the start, so the leadership change and later votes based on it could not stand.

The decision is not final and is being challenged through higher courts. Even so, it represents a striking judicial intervention into the internal leadership of Türkiye’s largest opposition party.

The immediate fallout was swift. After the ruling, Özel and other CHP leaders gathered at party headquarters in Ankara. Özel told supporters he would remain in the building and accused the courts of carrying out a coup against the opposition.

On May 22, Kılıçdaroğlu, acting as the court-recognized CHP leader, reportedly dismissed three party lawyers who had filed the CHP’s appeal to the Court of Cassation, Türkiye’s top appeals court for such cases, and replaced them with lawyers who moved to withdraw that appeal.

Justice Minister Akın Gürlek welcomed the ruling publicly, saying it would strengthen public confidence in democracy, while also noting that the decision remains open to appeal.

The case stems from complaints by a small number of former and current CHP members who alleged irregularities and vote-buying at the 2023 congress that ousted Kılıçdaroğlu and elevated Özel. The CHP denies those allegations.

A lower court had dismissed the challenge on Oct. 24, 2025, saying the dispute had effectively been overtaken because Özel had since been re-elected at later party congresses. But the complainants appealed, and the regional court reversed that outcome on May 21, rejecting the argument that later votes had cured the original dispute.

There is also a separate criminal proceeding in the Ankara 26th Criminal Court of First Instance over allegations that delegates were paid to influence the 2023 congress. Reporting has said Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and one of the CHP’s most prominent figures, is among those named in that case. That criminal matter is distinct from the civil case over whether the congress itself should be treated as legally valid.

The leadership fight matters because of what happened after Özel took over. Özel replaced Kılıçdaroğlu at the 2023 party congress, ending the long tenure of a leader who had headed the CHP for years and had been the opposition’s presidential candidate in May 2023, when he lost to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Under Özel, the CHP then posted one of its strongest recent results. In the March 2024 local elections, it won 37.8% of the national vote, ahead of Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, on 35.5%. It was the first time in 22 years that AKP was not the leading party in those elections.

That result gave Özel added political weight and made the court’s intervention more consequential, because it reached into the leadership of a party that had recently shown new electoral strength against Erdoğan’s camp.

Rights groups sharply criticized the ruling, while stopping short of treating the legal battle as over. Benjamin Ward of Human Rights Watch said, “The court’s decision to remove Özgür Özel and the entire CHP leadership is part of the Erdoğan government’s broader political efforts to sideline the main political opposition in ways that profoundly undermine civil and political rights and Türkiye’s democratic process.”

For now, the dispute is moving on two tracks at once: a court-recognized return by Kılıçdaroğlu to the top of the CHP, and continuing legal efforts by Özel’s camp to overturn an interim order that has abruptly reshaped the leadership of Türkiye’s main opposition party.