Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) is both the country’s founding party and its main opposition force. The trouble is, after nearly a quarter century of Justice and Development Party (AKP) dominance, the CHP still does not know who it represents or how to effectively challenge for power.

On May 21, 2026, a court in Ankara annulled the 2023 congress that had brought Özgür Özel to the leadership of the CHP, removed Özel and his team as an interim measure, and restored Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to office. The case centered on allegations of irregularities at the congress, while the CHP denounced it as part of a broader effort to weaken its elected leadership. The ruling came after more than a year of legal pressure on opposition figures, including the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, widely seen as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s most serious potential rival.

This is plainly part of a broader effort to discipline the opposition through legal and institutional pressure. But the crisis cannot be understood only as another authoritarian maneuver from above. It also exposes a deeper problem inside the CHP itself: a party that repeatedly promises renewal while refusing the class politics and strategic rupture that victory would require.