By Ece Toksabay
ANKARA (Reuters) -A Turkish court dismissed a case seeking to oust the main opposition party’s leader and annul its 2023 congress, a decision that relieves some pressure on President Tayyip Erdogan’s rivals after an unprecedented year-long legal crackdown.
The case in Ankara against the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and its chairman, Ozgur Ozel, was seen as a test of the country’s shaky balance between democracy and autocracy.
The court ruled that the case, which claimed irregularities in the 2023 CHP congress, no longer had any substance. The court referred to the party having re-elected Ozel as leader in an extraordinary congress last month.
The verdict boosted Turkish assets, which had crashed in March when a separate court in Istanbul jailed pending trial the city’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the party’s presidential candidate and Erdogan’s chief political rival.
The main Borsa Istanbul index was up more than 4% after the verdict and the lira strengthened against the dollar.
OZEL IN SPOTLIGHT AFTER ISTANBUL MAYOR’S ARREST
Ozel, 51, the CHP’s combative and hoarse-voiced leader, has risen to prominence since Imamoglu’s arrest, leading dozens of big anti-government street rallies.
Had the court ruled to oust Ozel, who was first elected leader at that 2023 congress, it could have thrown the opposition into further disarray and infighting and boosted Erdogan’s chances of extending his 22-year rule of the big NATO member country and major emerging market economy.
The centrist CHP, which denied the charges against it, is level with Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted, conservative AK party (AKP) in polls.
The next presidential election is set for 2028 but would need to come earlier if Erdogan aims to run again, given that he faces a term limit.
Separately, hundreds of CHP members and elected leaders, including Imamoglu, face an array of corruption-related charges in a broader, ongoing crackdown that it calls politicised and anti-democratic.
Erdogan’s government rejects this, saying the judiciary is independent.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Writing by Daren Butler and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Alexandra Hudson)
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