By Nergis Demirkaya
'Neutralize your biggest rival; weaken the CHP by splitting it.'
These two phrases sum up the purpose behind all the operations targeting the CHP over the past year, as seen from within the party.
This is the shared reading of numerous senior politicians siding with Özgür Özel. In their view, the ruling alliance’s primary objective was to eliminate Ekrem İmamoğlu — a figure with a very strong chance of defeating President Erdoğan — from the race. The campaign began with the so-called 'Fool Case.'
It then continued with the annulment of his university degree and his arrest on corruption charges which sought to disqualify İmamoğlu from politics. When all that proved insufficient, an espionage case was added on top. The end goal was not merely to prevent İmamoğlu's candidacy, but to weaken the party in the process. The plan, however, did not go as scripted.
According to a politician serving on the executive board of the office set up to manage İmamoğlu's presidential candidacy, it was Özel who upset the calculations. Following the March 19 operation in which İmamoğlu was arrested, the mobilization led by Özel kept the party alive. Far from falling, the CHP's polling numbers began pushing toward 35 percent — a level that would translate into more than 250 parliamentary seats.
In a parliament where a majority requires 301 seats, this represented yet another nightmare scenario for the AKP. And so the trigger was pulled on 'Absolute Nullity,' a judicial maneuver that had been building for months. By annulling Özel's leadership and reinstating Kılıçdaroğlu’s, the ruling alliance placed its bet on splitting the party. Whether this gamble will pay off remains to be seen.
IF EXTRAORDINARY CONGRESS FAILS, NEW PARTY OPTION INCREASES
If an extraordinary congress fails to materialize, the prospect of establishing a new party will grow.
Two full weeks have passed since the absolute nullity ruling. All statements from the Özel side point in one direction: resolving the crisis through an extraordinary congress. To that end, every available option is being pursued — collecting signatures from delegates, securing a decision from the Party Council. The first steps have already been taken.
But Kılıçdaroğlu — who assumed the party leadership as a result of the ruling — and his team have made clear that no congress will take place while legal proceedings are ongoing. Should the signatures gathered or any resolution passed by the Party Assembly be ignored, the Özel camp would have little option but to return to the courts. How long any new litigation over the congress question might take is anyone's guess.
That’s why, with elections roughly a year and a half away, the Özel camp will be forced to make a decision. In all likelihood, that decision will be to break from the CHP and found a new party.
Ekrem İmamoğlu's remarks in the immediate aftermath of the ruling — 'We will either find a way or make one' — are read in Ankara as a signal that a new party is in the offing.
A member of parliament aligned with the Özel camp sent a clear signal that the door to a new party is open: 'Public support is on our side. Our priority is to fight to the end within the CHP — but when those avenues are exhausted, we will have no choice but to weigh other options. We owe that much to the voters who stand behind us.'
WHAT WILL BE THE FATE OF THE NEW PARTY?
While many MPs argue that the CHP's century-old brand — its six-arrow logo included — is too valuable to abandon, a growing faction within the party believes a new formation could actually prove advantageous. They argue that a new party would shed the CHP's hundred years of baggage and carry the potential to draw in opposition voters who have never warmed to the CHP. They point, by way of example, to the political success achieved by the founders of the AKP, who broke from the Refah Party tradition and went on to reshape Turkish politics entirely. They believe the current crisis could be the launchpad for something stronger.
Not everyone is so optimistic. Some warn that the economic and political conditions that gave birth to the AKP bear little resemblance to the present moment, and that an increasingly authoritarian government would throw every obstacle it could in the path of any new party trying to do politics.
Those who caution against the risks of a new party point not to the AKP but to the İYİ Party as their cautionary tale. When MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli rejected the extraordinary congress demanded by Meral Akşener's dissidents, the ensuing legal battle ended in expulsions — and eventually in the founding of the İYİ Party. Yet a party that launched with a polling potential approaching 20 percent is today struggling to clear the 7 percent electoral threshold.
In the end, the absolute nullity crisis — which has already split the CHP in practice — may yet produce a formal rupture. The picture should come into focus over the next few months. If no agreement on an extraordinary congress can be reached with the current leadership, a new party becomes inevitable. Whether that party will chart a course resembling the AKP's rise or the İYİ Party's decline, only time will tell. It is, after all, entirely possible to set out with the ambition of the AKP and end up as the İYİ Party.
