A Turkish court removed the leader of the country’s main opposition party in a landmark ruling that triggered a stock market selloff and could strengthen President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s grip on power.
The Ankara appeals court annulled the results of the 2023 congress of the Republican People’s Party, known by its Turkish initials CHP, the party’s deputy chairwoman Gul Ciftci told Bloomberg on Thursday. The decision voids the election of Ozgur Ozel as CHP chairman. The party can appeal the ruling.
Turkish stocks slumped after the court decision, with the benchmark Borsa Istanbul 100 Index closing 6.1% down. The sharp decline triggered a market-wide circuit breaker. Five-year credit default swaps rose 12 basis points to 253 basis points, while the lira was little changed and trading at 45.6133 per US dollar as of 6:09 p.m. Istanbul time.
The decision paves the way for a comeback by former party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, potentially derailing CHP unity in the run-up to the next presidential elections, which is currently set for 2028 but expected earlier. It may also hamper the party’s efforts to secure the release of jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, Erdogan’s most prominent political rival.
Turkish markets were already strained by the fallout of the Iran war. To support the lira, monetary authorities offloaded almost all of the country’s US Treasuries in March. They have also sold gold reserves, tightened liquidity, made lira funding costlier and asked state-run lenders to intervene in the currency market. The ruling on Thursday will likely put further pressure on Turkish assets.
The decision came while Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan were in London to meet investors.
Dozens of CHP figures have been detained since the party’s sweeping victory in municipal elections in 2024, when it supplanted Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party as the most popular in the country. The crackdown has effectively reversed some of the CHP’s electoral gains while also unsettling investors and intensifying concerns about democratic backsliding.
More recently, authorities detained the mayor of Bursa, the country’s fourth-largest city, on charges of corruption and launched a probe against Ankara’s popular mayor, Mansur Yavas, over the alleged misuse of state resources. Like Imamoglu, Yavas is also seen as a potential presidential candidate. Opposition figures have said such charges are politically motivated.
In September, a court removed the CHP’s Istanbul leadership over allegations of corruption and appointed Gursel Tekin — a former Istanbul party chief and ally of Kilicdaroglu — as trustee, another move that unnerved markets and triggered a selloff.
Kilicdaroglu published a video on X a day before the ruling in which he spoke about the need to root out “corruption” within the CHP.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
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