Özgür Özel resigned from the Republican People’s Party on Friday together with 90 of his colleagues in parliament. A court had removed him from the party leadership in May and restored Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the man he had beaten in a party congress in 2023, to the post. The 91 filed the founding petition of a new party the same afternoon, the 103rd anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, which fixed the borders of the Turkish republic in 1923 and which the CHP has always treated as its own inheritance. The party is called Yeni Parti, the New Party. This is the largest single break in the history of Turkish party politics, and its consequences run well past the CHP.
It also mattered in many households whose CHP membership dates back generations. My late father-in-law was a devoted CHP member. I am glad that he did not see these days, when Kılıçdaroğlu worked …
