CHP set to lose 15th mayor to AKP as Afyonkarahisar's Burcu Köksal signals defection

Burcu Köksal, the Republican People's Party (CHP) mayor of the western city of Afyonkarahisar, is set to defect to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AK Party — the 15th CHP mayor to make the move since the 2024 local elections, in which the CHP had taken its largest municipal share in two decades. CHP officials told the Sabah newspaper that Köksal had not returned their calls and had refused requests for a meeting once the rumours broke. AK Party spokesman Ömer Çelik, asked about her on Saturday, told journalists they "may see who will join the party at the next parliamentary group meeting." Neither Köksal nor the AKP has formally confirmed the switch.

Mehmet Sevigen, the former CHP secretary-general, told Sabah the party was "not managed well." "They are off the course. The central administration acts on its own without listening to anyone else. They cannot call the people guilty of corruption guilty. They are stuck between Ankara and Silivri," he said — a reference to the Istanbul district whose prison holds Ekrem İmamoğlu, the former Istanbul mayor and one of the CHP's would-be presidential candidates. "They have to weed out the guilty. They cannot call out corruption, however. I expect more resignations unless the party sends out the corrupt ones."

Departing CHP mayors have cited pressure from CHP headquarters, lack of support for their demands, intolerance of internal criticism — especially on corruption — and a wider purge of dissidents. The report by Sabah said party chair Özgür Özel was particularly angered by mayors who met Turkey's minister of environment, urban planning and climate change to seek help with municipal services. Insulting messages from Özel to Mesut Özarslan, the recently resigned mayor of Ankara's Keçiören district, also disturbed colleagues, the report said.

Mustafa Yavuz, a dissident expelled from the CHP, said the corruption cases in Uşak, Antalya and Bolu had "left an impact on the public." He pointed to Uşak mayor Özkan Yalım, whom police detained at a hotel during a corruption raid that exposed an extramarital affair: "They resisted for two months before expelling Özkan Yalım. People noticed this." Yavuz said thousands of complaints had been filed with the CHP's public-relations office about the mayors and claimed three more were preparing to switch to the AKP.

The defections come as the CHP is also working through factional disputes from the contested 2023 party election that put Özel in the chair, and as Antalya mayor Muhittin Böcek's assets were seized earlier this week as part of an active corruption probe. The pattern leaves the CHP defending its 2024 local-election gains under simultaneous legal, factional and defection pressure, with İmamoğlu still detained in Silivri and Köksal apparently set to widen the breach.