The Turkish police have intervened with tear gas, batons and rubber bullets and has taken the headquarters of the main party of the oppositionthe social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHPin its Turkish acronym).
This week, the justice of the Anatolian country decreed the expulsion of the opposition leader, Özgür Özelof his party alleging alleged fraud in his election three years ago. In the last 12 months, the CHP has suffered brutal political and judicial persecution: dozens of its mayors have been imprisoned. Among these councilors, the former mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamogluthe president’s main political rival, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Imamoglu, according to the vast majority of polls, could win in an election against Erdogan, the highest authority of Türkiye since 2002.
Imamoglu has been in jail since March last year, and the prosecution is seeking up to 2,300 years in prison for a very long string of alleged crimes. THE CHP has always defended that these attacks are a political persecution of Erdogan, whose formation, the Justice and Development Party (AKPin Turkish), came second in the last local electionsheld in 2024.
“We are under attack. As of now, our party is in the streets, in the squares. We will march towards power. “You can throw us out of our headquarters, but you are throwing us out into the streets,” Özel said this Sunday after being forcibly removed from his own party headquarters. socialdemocrat He then called on the streets of the country’s big cities this Sunday afternoon, in a possible repetition of the protest movement experienced in Turkey just a year ago, after Imamoglu’s arrest.
An imposed intervener
With the expulsion of Özel, justice has imposed the former leader of the formation as general secretary of the CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglua highly contested leader—listed as warm and without energy by the majority of the opposition population—who lost in the last presidential elections against Erdogan, held in the spring of 2023.
Kiliçdaroglu, despite being highly criticized by his own party, has accepted the mandate of justice, and has assured that “it will take the party to a congress as soon as possible.”
“They want tame the oppositionthat we be a comfortable, calm opposition. But we will not be the opposition of ‘your majesty’. We won’t give them even a meter. From now on we are in the streets, and I will not be responsible for what happens. Those responsible are these coup plotters,” Özel declared.
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