After several tense weeks, on July 21, one of the most anticipated events in Turkish political life recently became a fact - Özgür Özel announced the creation of the New Party. He was followed by 90 deputies from the Republican People's Party (CHP) - the largest party split in Turkish history. Thus, just a day after its creation, the New Party became the largest opposition force in the Turkish parliament. In addition to prestige, this gives it the right to refer to the Constitutional Court with a request to annul legislative acts. The HDP was left with 44 seats and fell to fifth place in parliament in terms of the number of MPs, losing its status as a major opposition party for the first time in 24 years.
The creation of the new party is the culmination of a long process that began with the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March 2025.
After losing the 2023 presidential election, in which it was believed that the opposition had a good chance of removing the country's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his party colleagues from the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) did something unprecedented in its history - they ousted the previous leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu at a congress and elected Özgür Özzel in his place. As a former pharmacist, Özzel understands well the feelings and problems of the "deep Turkey", living outside the major urban centers. Significantly younger and more energetic than the elderly (77 years old) and uncharismatic Kilicdaroglu, Özel breathed dynamism into the opposition, and it won the local elections in March 2024 - both as mayoral seats in the largest cities, and as the largest number of votes received nationwide and, accordingly, control over a number of key municipal councils.
However, the opposition did not have long to enjoy its success, as in October 2024, the mayor of the largest Istanbul district with about 900,000 inhabitants - "Esenyurt" Ahmet Özer was arrested on charges of ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). After the arrest of the mayor from the People's Party of another Istanbul district - "Beşiktaş" - Rıza Akpolat in January 2025, the scope of police operations against it expanded. On March 19, the mayor of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, nominated as the opposition's presidential candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, was also arrested. In response, the opposition launched weekly rallies - in the countryside and in every neighborhood of Istanbul. However, the wave of arrests continued and so far 35 opposition mayors of districts in large cities or municipalities have been arrested. Among them are 7 mayors of urban metropolises with over 750,000 inhabitants or of regional centers, five of whom are still in prison.
Their arrest is also related to removal from office, and in some cases the opposition retained control of the municipalities, as the new mayors were elected by the municipal councils, but in others it lost them, as deputies were appointed ex officio by the authorities. Among the charges brought against the mayors are bribery, embezzlement, manipulation of tenders, abuse of office, creation of a criminal organization or membership in one. In some cases, charges of membership in a terrorist organization were also raised due to cooperation between the opposition and pro-Kurdish parties and representatives.
A shameful and sad day
Against this backdrop, on May 21, a second-instance court in Turkey declared the PKK congress held in the fall of 2023 null and void due to allegations by delegates that Özel's team had bought their votes. The decision of absolute nullity virtually erases all legal consequences of the congress and reinstates Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as the party's leader - a man who had led the party since 2010 and lost every election, except for the opposition's relative victory in the local elections in March 2019, when it won several key metropolises. At the end of the month, Kilicdaroglu took control of the party headquarters after entering with the help of a crowd of young people dressed in black, and after the police stormed the party activists who had barricaded themselves inside with tear gas. Supporters of the HDP described the incident on social media as "shameful" and "sad".
Thus, practically the oldest party in Turkey - founded 102 years ago by the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - found itself with two leaderships - the old leadership restored by the court, which began a purge, and the new leadership of Y. Özel, elected at the congress.
The group around Özel demanded that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu immediately set a date for a party congress at which the issue of leadership would be finally cleared up, which Kılıçdaroğlu refused on the grounds that legal proceedings were ongoing and that a purge of people suspected of being involved in even the slightest irregularity was necessary in the party.
However, the PKK electorate, consisting mainly of educated representatives of the middle classes, did not accept the legitimacy of the court imposed on Kılıçdaroğlu, who was considered to be under the influence of the government. Another argument of Özgür Özgür's group for demanding a congress was the fear that if one was not held, and the one from the fall of 2023 was considered invalid, the party could lose its right to compete in elections due to the requirement of Turkish law that parties regularly hold reporting and election meetings in order to be eligible to participate in the vote.
Independent Turkish political scientists were categorical that what happened in the PKK should be seen as an attempt by the ruling party to put the opposition under its indirect control, and not simply as a legal dispute between two party factions over their legitimacy.
The new party as an ultima ratio
Özgür Özgür and his team repeatedly emphasized that the creation of a new party would be an ultima ratio for them, a last resort, if they were left with no other choice and after exhausting all internal mechanisms within the party. However, they chose a symbolic moment for their actions.
The day of the party's foundation and submission of the application was chosen as July 24 - the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which defined the borders won by the nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal (he later adopted the surname Atatürk, with the introduction of surnames in Turkey) after the end of World War I. This allowed the New Party to show a connection to one of the key moments in the new Turkish history, related to the founding of the new state, but without taking responsibility for the repressive and secularizing policies of the PKK during its period of one-party rule from 1923 to 1950, which did not appeal to some conservative voters.
The founders of the new party began the day with Friday prayers at the "Haji Bayram Veli" mosque in Ankara and a visit to the building of the first Mejlis in Ankara, convened on April 23, 1920 by Mustafa Kemal at the beginning of his struggle against foreign occupiers in the country. Thus, signals were sent not only to secular and nationalist voters (the legacy of the founding father of the Republic Ataturk), but also to more conservative (prayer) voters.
What is the New Party?
All this raises the questions of what the new party will be, to which voters it will be oriented? Will it be simply the PKK-2 or something different and potentially larger?
In principle, uniting broad and diverse groups of Turkish voters into a large party is a difficult task, more difficult than in other countries. This is due to the several intersecting cleavages (deep political dividing lines). Among them are the divisions between Turks and Kurds, left and right, secular and conservative. Nationalist voters are also a significant segment. In many cases, identities dominate over ideological or economic interests. This results in interesting and sometimes paradoxical situations.
The center-left AKP, which is a member of the Socialist International, is secular and therefore receives support mainly from more highly educated and high-income groups that in other countries would vote for center-right parties. Turkey's poor are religiously and nationalistically inclined, which orients them towards the right-wing ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Conservative Kurds have in the past supported the AKP, rather than pro-Kurdish parties, due to their left-wing, progressive and secular platforms regarding women's emancipation, gender equality and others.
A study by the sociological agency "Gündemar" from May, even before the new party was founded, indicated that the new formation would receive the support of almost all PKK voters, as well as significant support from disillusioned voters that the PKK had not previously attracted.
These data are also confirmed by another survey conducted by a Turkish sociological agency on behalf of researchers from the University of Aberdeen in the period 22-24 July - precisely at the time of the new party's founding. 70% of PKK voters surveyed said that they would vote for the "New Party"; 15% were neutral. This shows that the trend towards a transition to the new party is relatively stable.
Logically, the voters of the AKP and the Nationalist Action Party are distancing themselves from the new political project. The New Party is also viewed favorably by former voters of the secular nationalist Good Party and the conservative, but separate from the AKP, New Welfare Party (Yeniden Refah Partisi). However, up to 40% of Kurdish voters are interested in the new formation. Whether this potential support will become a reality depends largely on how and how quickly the process of disarming the PKK and integrating Kurdish fighters into Turkish society will develop. Its failure, delay or unacceptable conditions for the Kurds on the part of the Turkish government, combined with disappointment with the participation of the previous Kurdish parties in the process, could lead to such an outcome.
Since the court's reinstatement of K. Kılıçdaroğlu as chairman of the PKK, Özgür Özel has received strong political support from the parliamentaryly represented Good Party and the smaller nationalist Victory Party (Zafer Partisi), as well as from the socialist Turkish Workers' Party, which has two deputies elected on a pro-Kurdish list.
The party leader Özgür Özel announced the party program, entitled "For a Common Future". He described the goal of the formation as creating the "Alliance of Turkey" (Türkiye İttifakı) - a term he used for the first time before the 2024 municipal elections. The aim is to unite social democrats, nationalists, conservatives and Kurdish democrats under one roof. This is a direct replica of the two existing alliances - "People" and "National", which united the AKP and the nationalists from the HDP, and the opposition parties, respectively.
In the party program, the phrase "we will change this oppressive system" appears a total of 15 times. Among the other main promises of the party are:
Abolition of the current presidential system with a large concentration of power in the hands of the head of state and a return to the parliamentary system of government;
Restoration of the rule of law by implementing the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. In practice, this means a promise to release politicians and civil activists who are being tried on various charges and for whom there are such unfulfilled decisions, including such notable names as businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala, Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş, and figures from the PKK;
Respect for the mother tongue and equality of citizens - an undoubted gesture towards Kurdish voters;
Accelerating the process of joining the EU.
Turkish analysts are categorical - if the New Party is simply a new incarnation of the PKK, it will not be successful. Due to its secular tradition, the PKK has historically had problems reaching conservative segments of Turkish society. Despite some changes in attitudes in recent years, its nationalist wing prevents effective cooperation with Kurdish voters. The PKK is a "microcosm" that sometimes exists by itself and for itself, in the words of Turkish observer Kemal Büyüküksel. The party often fails to renew itself because one of its leading and founding ideas is to be the guardian of a tradition - that of Kemalism, whatever that means according to the different trends among its supporters.
In Turkey, parties that have managed to achieve such a broad alliance have usually achieved electoral dominance for a longer period of time. A similar example of a broad centrist party is Turgut Özal's Patriotic Party. Özal himself is a technocrat, but from a religious and conservative family. In a paradoxical way, he combines his support for religious brotherhoods in society with liberalization in the economy and an alliance with the United States in foreign policy. After all, the Patriotic Party is the result of specific conditions after the military coup of September 12, 1980, when all other parties were banned. This is precisely what allows it to bring together right-wing religious conservatives, right-wing liberals, centrists and even some social democrats. However, when the conditions for multiparty democracy are restored and the corresponding parties are created, this broad and loose coalition falls apart.
The Justice and Development Party began its rule in a similar way in 2002. At that time, it united pro-religious and business groups, liberal intellectuals tempted by its promise to end the military's control over political life, and conservative Kurds, all disappointed by the series of economic, financial, and political crises that the Turkish political elite of the 1990s had brought the country to. Gradually, liberal intellectuals dropped out of this coalition, conflict erupted with the Fethullah Gülen movement, and a number of Kurdish AKP voters were disappointed by the autocratization and the growing alliance with extreme nationalists. This erosion opened up political space for the opposition to win the 2019 local elections, solidified and expanded in 2024.
To achieve such a broad public coalition, the New Party needs each of the three key figures so far in the HDP - leader Özgür Özel, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas. Each of them appeals to a certain segment of the electorate to the greatest extent. Özel is popular among social democrats. With his moderate style, origin from a religious family in the Black Sea region, but modern education and family, as well as a business career before politics, Ekrem İmamoğlu is close to the average Turk and is liked by both secular and more conservative voters. The İmamoğlu-Özel tandem also attracts Kurdish voters. A lawyer with roots in nationalist parties and experience in local government, Mansur Yavas has the image of a statesman and is liked by nationalists. He managed to attract them, without being very unpopular among the Kurds - a difficult task in Turkish politics. However, Imamoglu is in prison, and Yavaş has not yet announced whether he will join the New Party.
The famous Turkish sociologist Bekir Agırdır notes in several of his articles in various Turkish publications that by 2025, 93.6% of the country's population will live in smaller or larger cities. According to him, urbanization does not simply consist of moving people from villages to cities. People have not only changed their addresses, but also the rhythm of life, the nature of relationships, the function of the family, the way they use their time, work methods, criteria for success, consumption patterns and dreams for the future. If it wants to succeed, the new party must find a way to address these issues and the expectations of the majority of the people, he writes.
The difficulties facing the new party
In addition to these political and ideological ones, the newly established formation faces a number of administrative difficulties.
A party can only run in parliamentary elections if it has organizations in at least half of the provinces in Turkey (81 in total) and in at least one third of the districts in each province. This requirement was introduced to prevent the emergence of purely regional (four - pro-Kurdish) parties. Another requirement is that the party must have held its founding congress at least six months before election day. Considering that about ¾ of the PKK members are expected to switch to the emerging formation, the creation of party organizations is unlikely to be a particular problem.
Whatever we say, it is about money. The new party is leaning towards this issue, as it is currently not legally entitled to receive state subsidies. According to Article 1 of the Supplementary Provisions of the Law on Political Parties, in order to receive state aid, they must have participated in the last parliamentary elections and received at least 3% of the valid votes.
The party will rely on donations, membership fees and deductions from the salaries of MPs and other activists in elected positions. The new party announced a donation campaign, and in the first 24 hours, about 32,000 people donated a total of about 114 million Turkish liras. (about 2 million euros). The amount is not a bad start, but it pales in comparison to the support from the treasury for existing parties - about 2.5 billion liras this year for the AKP, 1.8 billion liras for the HDP, 721 million for the HDP, almost 700 million for the Good Party, 630 million for the pro-Kurdish DEM party.
There is one limitation, however - the total amount of donations that individuals or legal entities can make to the same political party within a calendar year is limited to 634,210 Turkish liras. As is known from political practice in the Balkans, a number of businessmen may refuse to publicly support the party with large sums in order to avoid problems or lose the opportunity to win state contracts.
Like a sword of Damocles over the heads of the party activists of the new party, the risk of new arrests and criminal cases against them hangs. This is added to the significant control the government has exercised over the traditional media in Turkey in recent years. However, this phenomenon has pushed many young people towards digital media and channels where pluralism is greater.
And where are we?
In general, although in recent years the AKP has been successful in attracting a significant number of them to its side, the majority of the emigrants in Turkey from the Balkan countries and Bulgaria are rather modern and secular-oriented. Therefore, traditionally in political terms, they support the Kemalist PKK. Usually, Balkan emigrants live in areas that are PKK bastions - Thrace, Izmir, Çanakkale. More than once during election campaigns, politicians of all stripes have visited the Balkan countries. Visits by Meral Akşener, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the PKK presidential candidate Muharrem Inçe to Greece and Bulgaria, and by Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Bosnia and Herzegovina are memorable.
In recent years, Bulgarian-Turkish relations have developed upward, regardless of who is in power in Sofia. This trend will most likely continue if the AKP and President Erdogan retain power, and if the opposition succeeds, especially in the context of its desire to strengthen relations with the EU.
In conclusion, the success of the new party will depend on a number of factors. Some of them are favorable for it - it has a charismatic leader who manages to create a connection with ordinary people during his rallies and visits to the country. There is dissatisfaction among ordinary people with the AKP's governance due to economic problems, the weakening of local party organizations and the imposition of candidates by the central leadership, the concentration of resource allocation in a more limited circle of people, and the inability to express criticism.
However, a number of challenges remain for the new formation. The AKP retains its powerful party structure, supported by the media and business circles. The ideological structuring of the new party is to be monitored, so that it both encompasses the widest circle of voters and has its own face and ideological backbone. Administrative, judicial, financial, media and other obstacles should not be ignored.
In addition, Özgür Özel must convince people that the new party can not only criticize the ruling party, but also govern effectively. To this end, a team of capable leadership of the formation must be demonstrated. The question of whether the party organizations will be dynamic enough and will be able to operate at high speeds is also open. Last but not least, for a country like Turkey, the international situation always has an impact on domestic and foreign policy.
author: Dr. Mariyan Karagyozov is a senior assistant at the Institute of Balkan Studies with the Center for Thracology - BAS