The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) faces a fateful reckoning in a trial over allegations of vote-buying during an intra-party election. Ahead of the next hearing in the trial next month, the party’s former chair, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has a steady stream of “visitors,” urging him to return to the party.
Kılıçdaroğlu, defeated by incumbent Özgür Özel in a November 2023 election, has signalled earlier that he may accept the role of trustee if the court issued a verdict against Özel on charges of allegations that he paid bribes to the voters to defeat him. The said verdict will likely be “absolute nullification,” which will suspend the duties of the Özel administration and will install a trustee. Kılıçdaroğlu is viewed as the most suitable candidate and one of his former lieutenants already took the office of trustee at CHP’s Istanbul branch after a similar case of vote-buying.
The former bureaucrat who ran CHP for 13 years still has backers within the party and is reportedly in touch with some 100 lawmakers in Türkiye’s oldest party.
Among the visitors of the former chair who ran unsuccessfully in the 2023 presidential elections against incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are former lawmakers, heads of CHP’s provincial and district branches and delegates who were active in the party during his reign.
The party sources said Kılıçdaroğlu’s meetings with fellow members of the party focused on scenarios about the future of CHP if the court issued a verdict of absolute nullification. Visitors vent their complaints about the Özel administration to Kılıçdaroğlu and stress the need to expel those involved in corruption, the sources said. The said corruption so far saw more than 20 mayors of the party detained or arrested for taking bribes. In other cases, dissidents within CHP complain about well-documented extramarital affairs of the party’s prominent figures.
As for the Özel administration’s plan to cling to power in case of a court verdict against them, sources say they plot legal maneuvers to dodge it, such as holding extraordinary elections, confident that they would win the office again. Özel succeeded in reelection last year after CHP dissidents filed the lawsuit over vote-buying allegations. In another scenario, they plan to start another party and transfer current lawmakers to the new one.
