Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu may take advantage of the opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) upcoming congress next month to build his trajectory toward his presidential candidacy for 2028.
Amid underlying tensions between prominent actors within the CHP, it is said that Imamoğlu eyes the party’s council (PM) of 60, where 15 of his supporters already sit and which decides on the presidential candidate for the party. The council is currently divided into three with the other two sections comprised of those close to former CHP Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and those supporting current chair Özgür Özel.
According to the information obtained, the Imamoğlu wing, which sees the charter congress as an important opportunity, aims to turn the process into PM elections by collecting 50+1 signatures from the delegates.
In relation to this, CHP group Deputy Chairperson Gökhan Günaydın, close to Imamoğlu, visited Kılıçdaroğlu. It was claimed that Günaydın particularly emphasized the dysfunctionality of the PM and asked for support to fix this situation through the congress. Kılıçdaroğlu has a significant number of supporters in the congress.
On the other hand, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş is another potential candidate. “If they tell me to be a candidate, I will be,” he said during a speech last month. The circle close to Özel is known to be against the candidacy of Imamoğlu and thus might support Yavaş’s candidacy.
Türkiye’s oldest party founded by the republic’s first President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk will hold a symbolic ceremony on Sept. 4 in Sivas, the Turkish province where Atatürk rallied the nation for unity before the war of independence in the aftermath of World War I more than a century ago. The congress will open on Sept. 6 and continue until Sept. 9 in the capital of Ankara.
The meeting will be a “charter congress” to redraw a road map for the party ahead of the 2028 general elections. The CHP is encouraged by the gains in the March 31 municipal elections and views the convention as the first step to winning the upcoming elections.
But the road to the government will likely be a bumpy one for the CHP as incumbent Chair Özel has his fair share of dissidents, despite being credited with unprecedented wins in the municipal elections, a first in decades for the CHP.
