The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairperson, Özgür Özel, escalated his rhetoric against the government as he was reelected in a controversial intraparty election on Sunday. As he claimed that a junta was in power in Türkiye and implied that the arrest of Istanbul’s CHP mayor, Ekrem Imamoğlu, was sanctioned by the United States, ministers hit out at Özel in scathing remarks while dismissing allegations.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said it was Özel himself who sought foreign assistance after the mayor’s arrest on charges of corruption, while Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç Özel attempted to divert attention from accusations Imamoğlu faced.
“Know your limits,” Fidan wrote in a social media post addressed to Özel on Sunday. Fidan stated that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received public support for years and fought against “tutelage” over politics, referring to multiple coups in Turkish history. “It is Özgür Özel himself who represents a tradition pursuing policies aligning with coups against the nation’s will. It is Özel himself who seeks political legitimacy without democracy through riots,” he said, referring to CHP’s call for protests against Imamoğlu’s arrest in March. Özel led rallies in Istanbul for days and his inciting remarks were followed by riots in several cities that targeted police. “For weeks, Özel, who blended his political ambitions with conspiracy theories and presented this as politics, claimed he felt abandoned by other countries,” he said.
Last week, the CHP chair hosted lawmakers from the European Union who expressed support for the party’s protest of Imamoğlu’s arrest after he visited Brussels before Imamoğlu’s arrest, in a bid to garner support against the cases Imamoğlu faced.
On Monday, Yılmaz Tunç told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Istanbul that CHP should examine its own history before uttering the word “junta.” “The president is the first leader elected by the public after the constitutional amendment for public election of the president. He was reelected twice after that and won hearts across the nation. Mr. President fought to elevate the standards of democracy. He fought hard to end the tutelage of a mindset favoring juntas and coups and ended the era of coups.”
“On the other hand, the CHP is a party that celebrated the May 27, 1960, coup as ‘Festival of Democracy and Constitution’ for two decades. The nation will not forget this,” he said. “The CHP leader has no right to make such remarks about a leader who has repeatedly won consecutive elections with over 85% turnout, a leader who dealt a blow to the mindset of coup plotters, junta supporters, and those favoring tutelage,” he said.
The minister noted that investigation into alleged wrongdoings of Imamoğlu and other suspects in the corruption case against Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) were still underway and Özel’s remarks were “an attempt to obscure the investigation, divert attention and overshadow the allegations in the case being pursued by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.” He noted that the case, as a matter of fact, stemmed from internal rivalries within the CHP. The CHP already faces another investigation over alleged vote buying by Özel in a November 2023 election, where he took the reins at the party. Party delegates accused the CHP’s prominent names of bribing delegates to vote for Özel.
Tunç also described Özel’s claim that Türkiye sought approval from the U.S. for the arrest of Imamoğlu as “ridiculous.” “It is nonsense that the Turkish judiciary will seek permission from the U.S. to launch legal proceedings. I think Özel speaks about himself. It is he, after all, who complained about his country’s judiciary to other countries. He claimed that the CHP had been abandoned by other countries. The Turkish judiciary will not receive instructions from anyone, let alone another country,” he underlined.