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In Turkish electoral politics, there is a fundamental tension: Can the opposition overcome political polarization and build a broader coalition? Or will the government concoct a legal formula to ensure Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s re-election and the survival of the ruling order?
These questions loom large as Turkey’s opposition enters a new phase: The CHP, the largest opposition party, broke apart in July, when Özgür Özel and 90 sitting MPs seceded to found the perhaps unimaginatively named Yeni Parti or New Party. While parties splintering is nothing new in Turkish politics, the scale of defection is. With over 90 MPs, Yeni immediately became the second-largest party in parliament, leaving the CHP in fifth place with just 44 MPs. At first glance, it might seem puzzling that infighting reached this level not long after the opposition’s greatest success: The CHP had won the most recent local elections in 2024, gaining control in many cities, including securing the mayoralty of the country’s largest metropolis, Istanbul.
The question now is whether Yeni can turn parliamentary strength into a political force capable of breaking Erdoğan’s hold on power. The question is not merely if power will change hands. The issue is whether a new political vision can emerge, and how a change of government would transform the existing political regime.
The storied Kemalist Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, or CHP), has had a tumultuous recent history. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu held the reigns from 2010 but at a party congress in 2023, convened following a series of electoral defeats against Erdoğan, a team led by Özgür Özel took control of the party. Three years later, however, a court annulled the 2023 party congress citing irregularities and reinstating the previous leadership. The move was widely seen as a government operation against the CHP after its electoral victory in the local elections.
The public expected that Kılıçdaroğlu would refuse to take back control of the party, thereby challenging the legitimacy of the court ruling. Instead, Kılıçdaroğlu and his team entered the party’s headquarters under police protection and took over the leadership. Over the following months, Özgür Özel’s team remained within the party and lobbied for an extraordinary congress. Once it became clear that this would not be possible, Özgür Özel and his supporters left the CHP and established the new political party.
The New Party quickly came to be seen as a strong contender to build on the CHP’s success in the most recent local elections and potentially bring an end to Erdoğan’s rule at the next general election.
Social-Democratic Traditions
The CHP meanwhile remains represented in parliament, but the party under Kılıçdaroğlu has lost much of its electoral base, as his return to the party leadership with the support of the government has severely damaged his political standing. Its current support appears unlikely to be enough to clear Turkey’s 7 percent electoral threshold in a future general election. The party’s parliamentary seats could nevertheless become relevant in any future negotiations over constitutional changes, including a possible amendment that would allow Erdoğan to run for another term, meaning that which the CHP’s remaining parliamentary strength may matter more than its electoral prospects. Whether the CHP can recover from the split, and whether the New Party can consolidate the voters it has gained from the CHP, will be among the key questions shaping the next election.
The CHP has historically represented the state’s institutional structure, the principle of secularism, parliamentary democracy, and the project of modernization.
For Yeni, the critical question is what kind of break from the CHP it represents. CHP, and now Yeni voters, could be described as social democratic, albeit with a nationalist tinge. Turkey’s long standing social democratic tradition has found expression in different names or political forms in different times, such as the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) from 1985 to 1995 (when the CHP was banned following the 1980 military coup) and the Democratic Left Party (DSP), which emerged as the largest party in the 1999 elections and subsequently led a coalition government until 2002.
As the founding party of the Republic of Turkey, the CHP has historically represented the state’s institutional structure, the principle of secularism, parliamentary democracy, and the project of modernization. However, from the 1960s onward, faced with the rise of working-class politics and social movements, the CHP attempted to expand the boundaries of its founding identity. Its left turn represented an effort to incorporate growing social demands into a redefined social democratic framework, while maintaining its historical connection to the state-centred political order.
For the State or For Social Movements?
The tension between the CHP’s role as a state build party and its claim to represent social opposition has been particularly visible in debates over the Kurdish question. During the SHP period in the late 1980s, Kurdish politicians were included in parliament – a democratic opening within the broader CHP tradition. Later, however, the party’s statist and institutionalist reflexes returned it to a more limited position.
Throughout much of the 1990s, the tension between CHP’s democratic discourse and its tendency to operate within the boundaries of the existing authoritarian state order was on full display.
The post-1980-coup centre-left’s commitment to its pronounced values was repeatedly tested by coalition governments with centre-right parties in the early 1990s, 1995, and 1999 to 2002, when, under the banners of the SHP, CHP and DSP, when the centre-left associated itself with the state’s security-oriented approach to political conflict by participating in government. Throughout much of the 1990s, Turkey was governed under a state of emergency, particularly in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces, where counterinsurgency policies and security measures were implemented, with the centre-left’s support.
The 1993 Sivas Massacre is another example: 33 people, most of them Alevi intellectuals, artists, and writers, were killed while the SHP was part of the governing coalition. Similarly, a 2000 operation against prisoners on hunger strike resulted in up to 100 deaths. Under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership in the 2010s, then, the CHP emphasized democratization and the rule of law. In 2016, however, the CHP supported lifting the parliamentary immunity of Kurdish-aligned Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) figures such as Selahattin Demirtaş, despite criticisms that the move violated constitutional principles. Yet again, the tension between CHP’s democratic discourse and its tendency to operate within the boundaries of the existing authoritarian state order was on full display.
The CHP Hits the Streets
Since 2023, the CHP had been led by a younger and more reform-oriented team under Özgür Özel. Following the 2024 local elections, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu came to be seen as the CHP’s leading potential presidential candidate. However, in March 2025, İmamoğlu was arrested on allegations of corruption. Following the arrest, the CHP moved towards a more confrontational position and a greater openness to social mobilization. The CHP, which had generally pursued a more centrist and institutionalist approach in response to state pressure, has been compelled, unexpectedly, to engage more directly with street politics.
Özel held rallies across the country, giving the CHP a broader public presence and helped transform opposition to İmamoğlu’s arrest into a nationwide political campaign.
The protests against İmamoğlu’s arrest that started outside Istanbul City Hall before erupting all other country, brought tens of thousands of people into the streets, making it the largest protests since 2013’s Gezi uprising. The street demonstrations also marked a significant shift in the party’s political strategy. Özgür Özel subsequently extended this strategy beyond Istanbul, holding rallies in cities across the country and seeking to turn the initial wave of public anger into a sustained political movement. This strategy initially appeared effective. It gave the CHP a broader public presence and helped transform opposition to İmamoğlu’s arrest into a nationwide political campaign.
The legal pressure on the CHP seems to be the government’s attempt to contain this momentum and push the party back into internal struggles over leadership and organization. The New Party has taken with it much of the CHP’s electoral base and its more mobilised wing, while the remaining cadres represent a more cautious and status-quo-oriented political tendency. This could create space for the New Party to develop a new political momentum of its own.
The Kurdish Question and Yenni Parti's Dilemma
Significant limitations remain. The party needs to overcome the secular–religious divide associated with its founding identity, manage nationalist reactions within its own support base, and establish a more constructive relationship with the Kurdish movement. The government’s engagement with the Kurdish movement has also made it more difficult for the opposition to maintain its previous discursive advantage on the issue.
Following negotiations between the Erdoğan government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), legislation establishing a legal framework for the disarmament and reintegration of former PKK members was proposed in parliament. The law provides for the postponement of certain sentences for former PKK members who did not commit serious crimes and is presented by its supporters as a step toward institutionalizing the disarmament process. The bill passed in August 2026, but it left Yeni in a difficult position: Özel had announced that the New Party would vote in favor of the bill, but allowed its MPs to vote freely; the vast majority of New Party MPs voted against the bill.
Özel’s statements in support of the bill triggered intense criticism from New Party supporters, as large parts of its base opposed the bill, mainly because it was introduced by the Erdoğan’s AKP and the far-right MHP, which has been in an electoral alliance with the AKP since 2018. Ironically, the Turkish nationalist MHP seems to have been the main architect of the bill perceived by some as an attempt to “pardon terrorists.” The fact that right-wing voters of the AKP and MHP have not shown much opposition to the bill, while the New Party’s position has become the main focus of public criticism, is a striking political development. In parliament, the far-right İYİ Party, itself a breakaway faction of the MHP which disagreed with entering an AKP-led coalition, put up the most resistance; its 29 MPs voted carrying Turkish flags.
The bill establishing a legal framework for the disarmament and reintegration of former PKK members has exposed a significant tension between New Party's leadership and a substantial part of its nationalist support base.
For the New Party the bill has created a particularly difficult political test. Erdoğan’s political agility in simultaneously winning over Turkey’s traditionally ultra-nationalist MHP while opening a dialogue with the Kurdish movement has been interpreted by his supporters as a renewed demonstration of his image as a strong and politically capable leader. On the other hand, Yeni’s decision to support the legislation, apparently in an effort not to be excluded from the process and to avoid severing its ties with the Kurdish movement, is being interpreted by much of its own support base less as a tactical move than as a political concession to the government. It has exposed a significant tension between the party leadership and a substantial part of its nationalist support base. The party therefore faces the challenge of maintaining its opposition to Erdoğan while avoiding alienating voters who remain deeply suspicious of any concessions to the Kurdish movement. This tension could make it harder for the New Party to consolidate the support it inherited from the CHP.
Simply positioning itself in opposition to the current government’s policies on the Kurdish issue will not be sufficient. The Kurdish issue is increasingly understood as a broader societal challenge rather than merely a security issue, requiring not only legal arrangements related to disarmament but also deeper steps toward equal citizenship, democratic inclusion, social reconciliation, and addressing unresolved legacies of the past. However, that even the MHP, a party with a long history of nationalist and hardline positions on the Kurdish issue, is now supporting the process may help broaden social acceptance and reduce resistance among segments of society that have been skeptical of such steps.
The Opposition Needs a New Strategy
Yeni Parti faces a difficult strategic choice. Is it more effective to follow the Erdoğan (or MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli) model, who have repeatedly reversed their positions and nevertheless managed to convert political flexibility into power? Or is Özgür Özel’s approach more sustainable: maintaining a dialogue with the Kurdish movement on the grounds that severing these ties would ultimately harm the opposition and Turkey’s prospects for democratic development? The latter may be a more principled strategy, but it also appears to carry significant short-term political costs.
The challenge is not merely to win elections, but to construct a new social coalition capable of enabling broader social transformation.
In the long term, the New Party faces the difficult task of persuading its potential constituency that Turkey’s democratization cannot be achieved by cutting ties with the Kurdish movement, but requires maintaining dialogue and building a broader political coalition that includes Kurdish actors. At the same time, the government could continue its campaign of law fare with legal proceedings against New Party leader Özel, including a potential parliamentary immunity case, the loss of his parliamentary status, and trial under detention.
The key issue is not denying the existence of contradictions, but developing the capacity to manage and overcome them. To become a hegemonic political force, the party must align its discourse and practice in a way that can transform the demands of those who are exhausted by economic hardship and by an authoritarian and exclusionary system serving the interests of a narrow elite into sustainable institutional capacity. The challenge is not merely to win elections, but to construct a new social coalition, political direction, and ultimately a new hegemonic bloc capable of enabling broader social transformation.
