The chaos in the Turkish opposition could prompt Erdogan to resort to a major political move
Chaos in Turkey's main opposition party over the removal of its leaders following a court ruling could favor President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the event of a snap election, analysts contacted by AFP said.
On Sunday, police squires raided the headquarters of the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Ankara, the country's oldest political formation, to take down its elected leaders in party positions.
The invalidation of the president elected by the party congress in 2023 is perceived as a new attempt to remove the head of state's political rivals in the run-up to the presidential elections.
Although scheduled for May 2028, they are likely to be brought forward to allow Erdogan, in power since 2003, to run for a new term.
Anticipation, the next logical step
“The speed and seriousness of these recent initiatives suggest that elections could be held even sooner than previously thought. And that the CHP remains a serious threat to Erdogan,” Seren Selvin Korkmaz, co-founder of the Istanbul Institute for Political Research, told France Presse.
“The aim is not only to divide the opposition, but to paralyze the party that still has the organizational capacity, the electoral force and the political legitimacy necessary to constitute an alternative to the government,” she adds.
The decision of the court in Ankara put the mild-mannered Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the rival of the ousted party chairman Özgür Özel, back in the race, causing a particularly damaging internal “crisis of legitimacy”, notes AFP.
In this context, calling early elections could prove to be the next logical step to exploit this weakness.
In this way, the Turkish constitution would also be “falsified”.
“From Erdogan's point of view, early elections would be advantageous if the CHP was forced into the disorganized, legally obstructed and internally emptied electoral process,” Korkmaz said.
For Hamish Kinnear, senior analyst at Global Risk Insight, this internal crisis within CHP could last months, even years.
“The government will undoubtedly consider early elections given the new fault line within the main opposition party,” he claims.
Although the Turkish Constitution limits presidential terms to two consecutive five-year terms, Erdogan can circumvent this provision by holding early elections before the end of the current term.
All polling institutes indicated an increase in the CHP's popularity since the protests that followed the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March 2025.
Designated his party's presidential candidate after the CHP's landslide victory in the 2024 local elections, the mayor was the head of state's strongest opponent.
But by taking charge of the protests, Özel established himself as a key figure within the party and continues to challenge his detractors, calling for a CHP congress as early as the end of the week and early elections.
