Case seen as test of judicial independence amid crackdown on opposition members including 2028 presidential candidate.
A Turkish court has thrown out a case against the country’s main opposition party that would have unseated its leader, Ozgur Ozel, on grounds that the charges had no substance.
The case, which centred on allegations of vote buying and procedural irregularities at a 2023 congress held by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was dismissed by the Ankara court on Friday, after the judge found it had “no basis”, according to news agency AFP.
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The case, brought by a former party member in February, had sought to invalidate the results of the congress, which had seen 51-year-old Ozel elected chairman, at a time when hundreds of party members had been jailed this year for alleged corruption.
Turkiye’s law enforcement agencies have detained more than 500 people, including 16 mayors over the last year in Istanbul and other CHP-run municipalities, according to a review by the Reuters news agency.
The crackdown saw Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP’s presidential candidate for the 2028 election, arrested last March for corruption – an allegation he denies. That arrest triggered Turkiye’s biggest protests in more than a decade and a sharp sell-off of the lira, the national currency.
Earlier this month, the party’s Istanbul head was removed from office after a court said delegates’ votes in a CHP provincial congress were influenced by cash payments. The party went on to expel the court-named successor from the party.
And recently it emerged that prosecutors were seeking a total of 415 years in prison for Riza Akpolat, mayor of the Istanbul district of Besiktas, who was accused of bid rigging.
The CHP claims that all charges are politically motivated, with Ozel having publicly accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of mounting a “coup against the future ruling party” in a bid to institute one-party rule in the country.
The Turkish government maintains that the judiciary is independent and denies political motives for the investigations into what Erdogan has described as a corrupt network resembling “an octopus whose arms stretch to other parts of Turkiye and abroad”.
Ahead of the 2028 presidential election, most polls show the CHP neck and neck with Erdogan’s AK Party.
Reporting from Ankara, media’s Sinem Koseoglu said the case was “critical” and that the ruling would “boost his [Ozel’s] legitimacy” and allow him to “strengthen his base” ahead of the 2028 election.
She said the court had “probably hesitated to give such an annulment decision”.
“When you ask constitutional experts, they have always said that any allegation within a political party must be dealt [with] by the higher election board because the political parties are private entities. A local court may not interfere,” she said.
Posting on X days before Friday’s verdict, Ozel said the party’s supporters would “march forward without fear, without division, growing hope”.
