Within the span of just a few days, the crisis surrounding Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), moved from the courtroom to the streets.
On May 22, an appeals court in Ankara annulled the 2023 party congress that elected Ozgur Ozel as CHP leader and temporarily reinstated his predecessor, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Two days later, police stormed the party’s headquarters in Ankara, using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a sit-in by Ozel supporters. On Tuesday, security forces in Izmir broke up gatherings seeking to attend a speech by Ozel.
The government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), says the case originated from within the CHP itself, citing complaints over procedural violations and alleged vote-buying during the party congress. The opposition, however, views the court rulings and security interventions as part of a broader effort to weaken it ahead of future elections.
But the crisis now extends beyond the fate of an opposition leader. It has revived a broader question about the future of “Erdoganism” in Turkey: Is Erdogan still capable of reshaping the political landscape as he has for the past two decades? Or does the growing pressure on the opposition suggest a system that has become increasingly defensive after major electoral and economic setbacks?
The developments come a year after municipal elections in which the CHP posted significant gains, retaining control of Istanbul and Ankara while expanding its presence in other cities. The results dealt a political blow to the AKP and demonstrated that the opposition, despite its divisions, remained capable of challenging Erdogan in major urban centers.
Pressure on the opposition intensified following the March 2025 arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, widely seen as Erdogan’s most formidable potential challenger in a future presidential election, particularly after helping strengthen the opposition’s local standing during the 2024 municipal vote.
Imamoglu faces charges related to corruption and political espionage, accusations he denies. The opposition argues the cases are politically motivated and designed to sideline him from the presidential race. His arrest came on the same day he reportedly secured roughly 15.5 million votes in opposition primaries to select a presidential candidate, shortly before his university diploma — a legal requirement for presidential candidates in Turkey — was revoked.
For Henri Barkey, a senior analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, the developments do not reflect overwhelming strength so much as they expose a deeper dilemma. Erdoganism “has been unraveling for some time,” Barkey told Alhurra, describing Imamoglu’s imprisonment as “the first real sign” of that process.
Barkey argued that Erdogan is “strengthening the opposition. The implication is that, to win, he will have to increase the pressure and twist the authoritarian switch further and further. Turkey is not Iran or another ordinary authoritarian system. Turkey, after all, considers itself part of the West. This does mean that there are limits to how much you repress and flaunt the laws. I think Erdogan is putting his ability to remain in power as well as his legacy in serious danger.”
Since the AKP came to power in 2002, Erdogan has built a political system centered on himself, his party, and the presidency, particularly after Turkey’s transition to a presidential system in 2018. The shift granted the presidency sweeping influence over political decision-making while weakening institutional checks that had traditionally constrained executive authority.
But several pillars of that system have weakened in recent years. Turkey’s economy has faced soaring inflation and a sharp depreciation of the lira, eroding the government’s popularity, especially in major cities. Municipal elections also showed that the opposition could translate public frustration over the economy into political gains.
According to Howard Eissenstat, professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University, this shift highlights a deeper structural vulnerability for the administration. As Eissenstat observes: “Erdogan still has control over the media, the security services and every state bureaucracy, but his rule has clearly lost popular support: not a collapse, but a slow erosion, from both regime fatigue and his failure to recover the economy.”
Gonol Tul, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, places the current crisis in a context extending beyond the 2028 elections. She told Alhurra “the most likely scenario right now, I think is for Erdogan to try to build enough parliamentary support for a Constitutional referendum and use that to consolidate his rule, but really, all of those options are possible.” “For the time being, his strategy with regard to the opposition has been the same for any of those scenarios: use the promise of a Kurdish peace deal to lure the pro-Kurdish DEM Party to his side while he eviscerates the CHP’s capacity to be an independent opposition party through arrests and judicial chicanery,” she added.
This legal maneuvering underpins a pressing constitutional dilemma. Technically, the Turkish President faces severe structural hurdles to extending his tenure, making his next steps highly volatile. Eissenstat outlines the restrictive paths available to the presidency moving forward: “If he wants to ensure his legacy, he has three choices: an early election that would allow him to bypass the term limits restriction, a revised Constitution, or handing over power to a successor… None of those are necessarily easy and, given the unpopularity of his government, none are risk free.”
The CHP, she noted, is not “an ordinary opposition party. It was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. By throwing the CHP into turmoil, Erdogan is also trying to erode Atatürk’s political legacy and weaken the emotional and political hold the party still has over millions of Turks.”
That interpretation does not negate the fact that the CHP itself faces genuine internal problems. Kilicdaroglu’s defeat in the 2023 elections triggered a leadership struggle within the party, and Ozel’s subsequent election represented an attempt by a new faction to move beyond years of repeated losses to Erdogan.
Yet that internal battle also created an opening for outside intervention. The legal challenges originated from party insiders alleging irregularities and vote-buying during the congress — claims the government has used to argue that the matter is a partisan dispute that moved into the courts, not political interference by the state.
Turkish journalist and political analyst Ali Asmar said the AKP found a political opportunity in the CHP’s crisis, even if its roots were internal. In his view, the ruling party is benefiting from the disarray among its rivals just as the opposition has historically sought to capitalize on crises within the government.
Meanwhile, Cahid Tuz, a former adviser to the Turkish prime minister, rejected claims of government interference, arguing that the complaints originated within the party and concerned organizational and financial allegations.
Still, any advantage for Erdogan may prove tactical rather than strategic. The crisis simultaneously underscores that the opposition, despite its divisions, has become increasingly capable of threatening the ruling party electorally, and that “Erdoganism” now relies not only on winning elections but also on controlling the political space in which the opposition operates.
Once again, the judiciary sits at the center of the debate. The government insists the courts are independent and that cases against opposition figures are grounded in legal evidence. The opposition counters that the judiciary has become part of a power structure tilted in favor of the authorities.
But the argument is hardly new in Turkey. Since the failed coup attempt in 2016, the country has witnessed sweeping waves of arrests and dismissals that the government described as necessary to safeguard national security and stability. Opposition groups and international organizations, however, said the measures expanded executive control over state institutions while weakening judicial independence and freedom of expression.
Even so, not all observers believe Turkey is heading toward political collapse or complete deadlock. Former U.S. diplomat James Jeffrey told Alhurra that “President Erdogan has faced considerable political and public opposition in recent years as seen especially in municipal elections. The government for example just had to back down after trying to close Bilgi University seen as a locus of opposition.”
Jeffrey also argued that “Washington faces serious international turbulence from Ukraine to Iran to China. Turkiye is critical to success in the first two, and most Americans have lost interest in admonishing or tinkering with other countries, particularly those Washington needs, over their internal policies.” He added that a Trump administration would be unlikely to publicly voice concerns about democratic backsliding in Turkey, and that he did not expect a subsequent administration to do so either.
That reality gives Erdogan significant external breathing room. Turkey is preparing to host a NATO summit in July amid growing Western concerns over the future of the war in Ukraine and broader European security. Tul said Erdogan benefits from “an unusually favorable international environment,” in which Western capitals increasingly view Turkey through the lens of its strategic position and defense industry rather than its democratic record.
That environment may provide “Erdoganism” with an opportunity to endure, but it does not resolve its internal contradictions. The system Erdogan built still commands powerful tools — the state, the ruling party, the presidency, the security apparatus, and the judiciary. Yet it now faces an opposition that has demonstrated its ability to win major cities, voters battered by economic hardship, and political figures such as Imamoglu who are capable of challenging the ruling party’s monopoly on power.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
Asrar Chbaro
Ringo Harrison
Ringo Harrison is a content coordinator based in Washington DC. He is a recent graduate from Lund University in Asian Studies. He previously worked at American Purpose.
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan
Ezat Wagdi Ba Awaidhan, a Yemeni journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Washington, D.C., holds a master's degree in media studies.
