Middle East Politics > New party to challenge Erdogan in Turkey

 

Turkey: Persecuted Opposition Leader to Create Breakaway Party to Challenge Erdogan

Jul 23, 2026 8:00 am By Christine Douglass-Williams2 Comments

Reuters reported in May about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unprecedented crackdown on his opponents. One of those is Özgür Özel, whose power, due to his popularity, Erdogan has attempted to neutralize. “Özel said he had been forced to leave the party founded by modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa ‌Kemal Ataturk after a court annulled the CHP congress that brought him to power, deepening the country’s political crisis.” But Özel isn’t going down so easily. More about his new party: 

Turkish opposition leader to create breakaway party to take on Erdoğan

by John Paul Rathbone, Financial Post, July 21, 2026:

The deposed leader of Turkey’s main opposition party has said he is creating a new political party to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a bold move that could reshape Turkish politics. Özgür Özel’s gambit could unite Turkey’s fractured opposition, mobilise disgruntled voters and threaten Erdoğan at the next presidential election scheduled for 2028. But he also faces the risk of prosecution as part of a continuing legal crackdown by Turkish authorities against government critics and dissent. Recent polls suggest that Özel’s still unnamed “new party” would handily beat Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) if a vote were held today. “We are charting a new path,” Özel said to lawmakers of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, in Ankara on Tuesday. “We will leave no one behind . . . on this march to power,” he added to rapturous applause. “We carry within us the unwavering hope of a new beginning.”

Photo: Özgür Özel, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Turkey has been likened to “the new Iran” for justifiable reasons. Erdogan has dreams of a revived Ottoman Empire, with himself as caliph. As a man who has declared “Our God commands us to be violent towards the kuffar” (infidels), he is dangerous beyond the region.

Erdogan will predictably continue efforts to suppress any threats to his leadership from Özel.

Last year, Jihad Watch reported about another key opponent besides Özgür Özel, who also threatens Erdogan: Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, whom Erdogan likewise targeted. Imamoglu had considerable support in his bid to challenge Erdogan for the presidency, but then he was arbitrarily detained on “corruption” suspicions — which are often conjured up against anyone who threatens Erdogan’s authority or leadership. Imamoglu was arrested, interrogated, jailed, and stripped of his title as mayor. The furious protests that subsequently erupted in Turkey were a threat to Erdogan. What happened next was even more potentially disastrous for the Turkish president. Despite Imamoglu’s incarceration, the opposition CHP party officially nominated him anyway as its presidential candidate for the 2028 elections. The numbers in support of him were overwhelming. “Some 15 million people voted” in the primary. Erdogan had hoped that Imamoglu would languish in jail and be silenced, but he is doing neither. The Guardian subsequently published a letter Imamoglu wrote from jail HERE. In February, Imamoglu dared Erdogan to call early elections.

History repeats itself in a modern-day Turkey, where Erdogan, the self-appointed embodiment of the Ottoman caliphate, stands against the past leader of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s CHP party, Özgür Özel, whose new breakaway party is expected to draw many from the CHP. Ideally, Özel and Imamoglu would find a way to join forces to unite the opposition and fight against Erdogan’s crackdown and tyranny.

The  Financial Post further states that with Özel’s popularity and high profile, “he helped lead the CHP to a resounding victory against the AKP in the 2024 municipal elections.” And that his successes are “likely to place him at the centre of the opposition’s efforts to unseat Erdoğan, who has governed Turkey for more than 23 years.”

Between the tenacious Özel and Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan finds himself facing a dual threat at the ballot box to his tight grip on power. Erdogan will no doubt continue to tyrannize both Özel and Imamoglu and wage a ferocious battle against both ahead of Turkey’s next election in May 2028, as he views these opponents as existential threats.

In the meantime, both opposition leaders can exert diplomatic pressure on Erdogan by appealing to international human rights watchdogs, as well as to NATO, of which Turkey is still a member. They can also appeal under the European Convention on Human Rights. These measures would stir media interest, and embarrass and potentially isolate Erdogan, giving Turkish democracy a fighting chance in 2028.