Ousted main opposition leader Özgür Özel resigned from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) on July 24 alongside 90 other lawmakers to establish a new political movement, reshaping the balance of power in parliament.
In a video posted on X, Özel was seen at his desk, flanked by a large Turkish flag, signing both his resignation papers and the founding documents for Yeni Parti, or New Party.
“May it be beneficial to our country, our nation, our party, and all of us,” Özel said.
The founding paperwork was submitted to the Interior Ministry around noon.
The New Party enters parliament with 91 lawmakers, making it the second-largest bloc in the 600-seat legislature after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which holds 277 seats.
The CHP falls to 44 seats following the resignations, dropping to fifth place behind the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) with 56 seats and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) with 46.
Özel’s decision comes two months after an Ankara court annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership election over allegations of vote-buying, removing him as leader and reinstating his defeated predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Although Özel appealed the ruling, procedural delays meant the case reached the Court of Appeals only hours before it entered its summer recess, prompting him to move ahead with launching a new party.
In his final address to CHP lawmakers at the party’s weekly meeting in parliament on July 21, Özel said Türkiye stood at “a historic crossroads.”
“The new party we are about to establish will become the main opposition force in the Grand National Assembly by a wide margin,” he told lawmakers.
“In politics, we do not give up on our beliefs; instead, we all take on a difficult and risky burden for the country’s sake,” he said, invoking a Turkish idiom about “putting on a shirt of fire.”
Özel was elected CHP leader in late 2023, and within months the party secured its first nationwide local election victory over Erdoğan’s AKP in decades.
A close ally of Özel and the CHP’s presidential candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has been jailed since March 2025 on graft allegations, along with hundreds of party officials. At least 27 CHP mayors are currently behind bars.
