Turkey Police Storm CHP Headquarters, Oust Opposition Leader

Turkey's deepening political crisis broke into the open. Riot police stormed the Ankara headquarters of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) on Sunday, firing teargas, pepper spray and plastic pellets to force out the party's leader, Ozgur Ozel, who had barricaded himself inside. The raid followed an Ankara appeals court ruling that annulled the CHP's 2023 leadership congress, removed Ozel and reinstated his predecessor Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who lost the 2023 presidential runoff to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On Tuesday, police used water cannon to stop crowds reaching Cumhuriyet Square in Izmir, a CHP stronghold, where Ozel had called a rally; the pro-opposition broadcaster Halk TV showed demonstrators soaked by water cannon. Undeterred, Ozel said he would "go wherever the people are waiting," addressed thousands at a nearby square, and demanded an immediate congress of the party's roughly two million members. The interior minister said force had been used at the headquarters "at the request" of Kilicdaroglu's camp.

The CHP, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, won Turkey's 2024 municipal elections, holding Istanbul and Ankara, and is level with Erdogan's AKP in recent polls. Its Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu -- widely seen as the president's likeliest challenger -- has been jailed since March 2025 on corruption charges. Critics, including the pro-Kurdish DEM party and Macit Karaahmetoglu, a Social Democrat in Germany's Bundestag who heads the German-Turkish Society, cast the court action as "a targeted attack on democracy" and the use of "the country's judiciary as a weapon," while authorities opened a criminal investigation into the unrest and the government insisted its courts act independently. Though the next election is not due until 2028, many expect Erdogan to push for an early vote.

The squeeze extended to the press. Authorities seized the opposition broadcaster Tele 1 and moved to auction it, after arresting its editor-in-chief Merdan Yanardag; its journalists relaunched on YouTube as Tele 2, with anchor Murat Taylan vowing to "continue until Tele 99." Reporters Without Borders says roughly 90 percent of Turkey's national media is now under government control. In a televised Eid al-Adha message, Erdogan struck a discordant note, touting economic growth and defense exports above $10 billion and wishing that the holiday would let "those who are estranged reconcile.