Leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's main opposition party and its oldest. He was elected as chair of the CHP at a convention in 2023.
On October 24th 2025 a court in Ankara threw out a lawsuit that could have ousted him and replaced him with a trustee. The case rested on claims that the convention where he was elected had been tainted by vote-buying; it was widely seen as a ploy backed by the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Ozel warned it was no time for complacency: "What mattered in this case was the process, not the result. They did this to wear down the CHP."
Since March 2025 hundreds of CHP members, including the mayors of some of Turkey's biggest cities, have been detained. Mr Ozel says Erdogan would not dare to seize direct control of Istanbul, which accounts for almost a third of Turkey's economy. "This would cause irreversible damage to the economy, Turkish society, and politics," he says. He refers to Erdogan's aim as turning the CHP into "his majesty's opposition."
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