The Turkish opposition leader has confirmed he will not be on the ballot for the presidential vote in 2028.
The Republican People's Party (CHP) Chair Özgür Özel on Wednesday said he would “lose his objectivity, surrender to his personal ambitions and block other candidates’ paths” if he were to run for Türkiye’s top office in the next elections.
“I will not let my ambitions cost Türkiye another election,” Özel said.
Özel, 50, was elected CHP chair last November, replacing Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the May 2023 presidential vote, including in a runoff.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s 13-year reign at Türkiye’s oldest party was marked by back-to-back election defeats that culminated in an outburst of frustration, spurring a movement of change and, subsequently, a rift with those still loyal to the old leader.
Özel, since taking office, has promised to deliver an extensive rejuvenation of the secularist party’s policies while allegedly sidelining his dissidents. He also broke the CHP’s historic ceiling of 25% nationwide support in the March 31 local elections.
In a recent interview, Özel described himself as a “football coach” and said he preferred to pick the “right player for penalty shoot” instead of “shooting for himself.”
He was referring to CHP’s popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, who helped Özel wrestle the party from Kılıçdaroğlu and has been rumored since last year to challenge Erdoğan in the general vote.
Imamoğlu, who won Istanbul in 2019 and again in the local elections this year, has ambiguously remarked he would “be where the nation wants me to be” when asked about running for president.
The CHP insists on snap elections in November 2025 while Özel still grapples with deepening discord among his ranks.
Speaking to a pro-opposition network, Özel again dismissed claims the party lawmakers and delegates were preparing for an extraordinary council meeting.
“These rumors have floated since before the CHP’s charter congress in September. They’re trying to push the party to infighting to make it look like as if such a problem exists,” Özel said, hitting out to social media users campaigning for Kılıçdaroğlu.
Kılıçdaroğlu, who came at odds with Özel for the latter’s outreach to the government to normalize ties, is unifying his front within the CHP against the current administration.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s supporters have tried to drum up more support for an intraparty election during a September convention but failed. This time, they seek to collect signatures from some 50 lawmakers for a petition to hold another election.
“Mr. Kemal would not deign to do these things,” Özel said.
He claimed he had a “deep dialogue” with the 53-year-old Imamoğlu “even more so than my own brother.”
“If I had a big brother, I cannot imagine us having a better relationship than we do with Mr. Ekrem,” Özel said.
The CHP, however, has been rocked by another scandal earlier this month when one of its mayors in Istanbul was arrested over links to the terrorist group PKK.
Özel sought to rally mayors to protest the arrest, but most mayors did not comply with his call. Özel excused mayors, claiming they had public duties to attend, but political pundits said some mayors likely tried to distance themselves from the issue.
Added to the rumors that Özel’s supporters are isolating CHP’s Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş to slim his chances of being picked as CHP’s presidential runner in 2028, the divide in the opposition party is becoming more apparent.
