Riot police in Turkey have fired teargas and water cannon to break up a rally called by the ousted opposition leader Özgür Özel days after a court dismissed him from office.
On Sunday, riot police had battered their way into the main opposition CHP’s headquarters in the capital, Ankara, firing teargas and beating party members before throwing them out, Özel said.
A shock court ruling last Thursday overturned a 2023 party primary that elected Özel. It was the latest in a string of moves against the CHP, Turkey’s oldest political party, which scored a win over Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP in 2024 local elections and has been rising in the polls.
Since the court ruling, the party has been in chaos. The ruling ordering Özel’s defeated rival Kemal Kıliçdaroğlu, seen as a lacklustre politician, to resume his position as CHP leader.
Özel called the lunchtime rally in İzmir as Turkey was poised to shut down for the four-day Eid al-Fitr holiday, which begins on Wednesday.
Ahead of the rally, the governorate ordered the closure of the city’s central Cumhuriyet Square, deploying a large number of riot police with water cannon trucks who tried to break up the flag-waving crowd, Turkish media reported.
“President Özgür, free Turkey!” the crowd shouted in scenes broadcast live on TV.
Thousands of chanting demonstrators waved flags as Özel addressed the crowd from the top of a bus, urging Kıliçdaroğlu to agree to a party congress immediately so members could choose their leader.
“Bring whoever you want as a delegate and let’s compete,” he said, directly challenging Kıliçdaroğlu to hold a party primary “within a week or two” of Eid al-Fitr, which ends on Saturday.
He said the ousting of CHP’s elected leadership was “not an internal matter for the party”.
“Anyone who sees it that way is deceiving the people … this is between the people and Erdoğan,” Özel said. “The issue is about stopping a party that is on the march towards ultimate power.”
The court case concerned allegations of vote-buying in the 2023 primary. It was thrown out by an Ankara court in October for lack of substance, only to be overturned on appeal.
The assault on the CHP began in earnest with the jailing of the Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival and the party’s presidential candidate, on charges widely seen as political.
Özel said on Sunday: “Erdoğan has lost all restraint. Just as he imprisoned the presidential candidate who could defeat him, he is now effectively shutting down the political party that could defeat him. Turkey has ceased to be a modern democratic republic and has turned into a one-man regime.”