Turkey CHP crisis: 28 Party Assembly resignations force emergency congress under bylaw threshold

Twenty-eight members of the Party Assembly of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party have resigned from their positions ahead of a scheduled party meeting, in a move that threatens to trigger an automatic extraordinary congress under the party’s own bylaws and deepen one of the most serious internal crises in the CHP’s history.

The resignations come from the Party Assembly, the CHP’s internal high decision-making body, not from the party’s parliamentary group in the Grand National Assembly. According to CHP bylaws, specifically Article 24/3, if the number of Party Assembly members falls below 40, both the Party Assembly and the Central Executive Board automatically dissolve, mandating an extraordinary congress within 45 days. With 28 resignations from a reinstated assembly of approximately 57 members, the remaining active membership now sits perilously close to or below that threshold.

The leadership crisis behind the resignations

The move is widely understood as a strategic intervention by supporters of ousted CHP leader Özgür Özel to block the court-imposed restoration of former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and force fresh party elections. The current Party Assembly had been reinstated following a Turkish court’s ruling of absolute nullity, a legal concept in Turkish law meaning the original decision was void from the outset, applied to Özel’s 2023 leadership election. That May 2026 ruling removed Özel and reinstated Kılıçdaroğlu, triggering immediate and intense resistance from Özel’s supporters within the party structure.

By engineering resignations that push the Party Assembly below the 40-member threshold, Özel’s camp is attempting to use the party’s own constitutional machinery to force a fresh congress at which the leadership question can be settled through an internal democratic process rather than through the courts.

Significance for Turkish politics

The CHP is Turkey’s largest opposition party and the primary political counterweight to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP-led government. An extraordinary congress called under these circumstances would consume the party’s organisational energy and public attention at a moment when the opposition needs cohesion ahead of future electoral contests. The legal and factional battle between the Özel and Kılıçdaroğlu camps has already played out through courtrooms, party organs, and now a coordinated mass resignation, reflecting how deeply the split runs through the party’s senior leadership layer.

Further reactions from Kılıçdaroğlu, Özel, and other senior CHP figures are expected as the day develops. The situation remains fluid, with the extraordinary congress mechanism and its 45-day timeline now potentially in motion.