Turkey's Opposition Changes Leader After Election Defeat

Istanbul, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Nov, 2023) Turkey's main opposition party on Sunday dumped its embattled leader in favour of an untested former pharmacist following a disappointing election defeat to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The staunchly secular Republican People's Party (CHP) has been riven by divisions since Kemal Kilicdaroglu lost a bitterly fought May runoff against Turkey's dominant but divisive president.

At the party's annual congress, delegates voted to replace Kilicdaroglu with the relatively unknown Ozgur Ozel after squandering what many viewed as the opposition's best chance to end two decades of Erdogan's Islamic conservative rule.

The May election came in the throes of a dire cost-of-living crisis that analysts blame squarely on Erdogan's unorthodox economic beliefs.

Kilicdaroglu managed to pull together a multi-faceted alliance that included both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists and Kurds.

But the six-party bloc nearly fractured months before the election and then underperformed in the polls.

Erdogan managed to cement his control of parliament through support from Islamic and ultranationalist groups.

Kilicdaroglu then riled many within his own party by refusing to concede defeat and quit.

The 74-year-old lost his leadership post after two rounds of heated party congress voting to a candidate backed by Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

Ozel had spent a large part of his career working as a private pharmacist in the socially liberal Aegean resort city of Izmir.

He eventually became head of Turkey's pharmacy association and was elected to parliament in 2011.

The bespectacled 49-year-old German speaker won the final ballot by a 812-536 margin after promoting himself as the candidate for "change".

But the vote was far more focused on personalities than any particular policies.

Kilicdaroglu compared attempts to unseat him to a "stab in the back".

Ozel countered that he wanted to "write a new story and reshape Turkish politics".