• The congress is expected to shape the party’s strategy as it faces legal uncertainty
• Authorities have clamped down on demonstrations detaining nearly 2,000 people including students and journalists

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s main opposition party has announced it will hold an extraordinary congress on September 21 after a court ousted its Istanbul leadership on graft allegations, a party source confirmed to AFP on Saturday.

The decision comes amid growing political pressure on the Republican People’s Party (CHP) after a court this week annulled the outcome of its Istanbul provincial congress in October 2023, throwing out its leader Ozgur Celik and 195 others.

More than 900 CHP delegates on Friday submitted a petition to a local election board in the capital Ankara to authorize the congress, the source told AFP.

The congress is expected to shape the party’s strategy as it faces legal uncertainty.

The CHP, the largest opposition force in the Turkish parliament, won a huge victory over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP in the 2024 local elections.

Since then, the party has become a target of a wave of arrests and legal cases that culminated in March with the jailing of Istanbul’s popular and powerful mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on corruption allegations that he denies.

The arrest and jailing of Imamoglu, seen as a key rival to Erdogan, sparked street protests unprecedentedly in a decade.

Authorities have clamped down on demonstrations detaining nearly 2,000 people including students and journalists — most of whom were later released.

AFP