# Özgür Özel Chairman of Turkey's main opposition party, the **CHP**, and the figure who has turned it from a cautious parliamentary bloc into a street-mobilizing movement against [[Recep Tayyip Erdoğan]]. A pharmacist by training and a longtime parliamentarian, Özel won the CHP leadership in **November 2023**, ousting Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after the party's demoralizing loss in the 2023 presidential election. ## From the chamber to the square Özel's wager has been that opposition cannot be conducted only inside captured institutions. After the March 2025 arrest of [[Ekrem İmamoğlu]], he led the CHP into sustained nationwide rallies — the largest Turkish demonstrations in over a decade — and organized a petition for free elections and İmamoğlu's release reported to have gathered tens of millions of signatures. The strategy reframed the CHP as a mass democratic movement rather than a defeated establishment party. ## The squeeze Özel leads under direct pressure. An Ankara court moved to annul the CHP's 2023 congress over alleged irregularities — a step that could void his own leadership — part of what analysts describe as an effort to refashion the opposition into a palace-approved, controlled "opposition" with no real chance of taking power. His task is to keep a mass movement alive while the legal ground beneath the party is deliberately destabilized. ## Related - [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]] - [[Ekrem İmamoğlu]] - [[Recep Tayyip Erdoğan]]