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A New Party Without a New Beginning: The Same Faces Behind a New Name

Özgür Özel’s departure from the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP) and the establishment of Yeni Parti (New Party) have been presented as a moment of democratic renewal. Following the controversial court decision that annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress and restored Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to the party leadership, Özel and ninety other CHP deputies resigned and created a new political organization. The new formation will become the principal parliamentary opposition, while only 44 deputies remain in the CHP. The circumstances surrounding the split are unquestionably disturbing. Judicial interference in the internal affairs of an opposition party raises profound concerns about democratic competition, party autonomy and the political use of the courts. Özel and his supporters can reasonably argue that they were forced to create an alternative organization after the leadership elected by CHP delegates was removed through judicial intervention. Yeni Parti has started its political life with a new name, but not with a new beginning. Its founders are overwhelmingly the same politicians who occupied positions inside the CHP only days earlier. Rather than assembling a broad coalition drawn from civil society, democratic activism, trade unions, academia, independent conservative movements, Kurdish political circles and younger generations, the party has simply transferred most of the former CHP parliamentary group into a different legal structure. This is not yet the creation of a new national movement. It is a parliamentary migration. A New Party Without New People Yeni Parti also appears excessively dependent on the Özgür Özel–Ekrem İmamoğlu political axis. Its immediate justification is understandable. Özel was removed after a highly controversial court ruling that annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress, while the legal and political pressure directed against CHP municipalities and İmamoğlu has raised profound concerns about judicial independence and democratic competition. Critics have described the intervention as part of a broader campaign against Turkey’s principal opposition movement. However, resistance to an undemocratic intervention does not automatically make every strategic response democratic. A party founded primarily to preserve one leadership group’s parliamentary power risks becoming a vehicle for personalities rather than principles. Yeni Parti has immediately taken most of the CHP’s deputies and claimed the status of the main opposition, but numerical superiority is not the same as ideological legitimacy. Some of its founders previously belonged to İYİ Parti (Good Party), Demokrasi ve Atılım Partisi (Democracy and Progress Party, DEVA), Demokrat Parti (Democrat Party) and other political organizations. But they are not joining Yeni Parti as representatives of independent parties or social movements. They entered the new organization as sitting CHP deputies who had already been incorporated into Özel’s parliamentary network. Their personal political histories may be diverse, but personal diversity is not the same as social representation. Yeni Parti has not been established through a national convention bringing together liberal democrats, social democrats, conservative reformers, Kurdish representatives, women’s organizations, trade unions, youth movements and independent civil-society figures. It was established by parliamentarians deciding whether to remain in the CHP or follow Özel into another party. That may be sufficient to establish a parliamentary group. It is not sufficient to establish a Türkiye partisi (a party representing the whole of Turkey). A genuine party of Turkey would allow different political and social constituencies to participate directly in writing its programme, selecting its leadership and defining its institutional structure. Yeni Parti has instead created the organization first and will apparently invite society to join later. This is the opposite of political renewal from below. It is another party constructed from above. Tuncay Özkan and the Wrong Face of Renewal The contradiction between Yeni Parti’s democratic language and its actual founding personnel is most clearly embodied by Tuncay Özkan. He is not simply an experienced journalist who later became a politician. He founded Kanaltürk television, established the Biz Kaç Kişiyiz? (How Many of Us Are There?) movement and played a leading role in the Cumhuriyet Mitingleri (Republic Rallies). Through television, political campaigning and mass mobilization, Özkan became one of the most recognizable media figures associated with hard ulusalcılık (hard-line secular nationalism). He was not a marginal participant in that movement. He helped organize it, popularize its language and transform it into a visible political force. The Republic Rallies were officially presented as a defence of secularism and the constitutional order. Defending secular government was legitimate, particularly amid concerns about the growing concentration of power under the Justice and Development Party. But the wider political culture surrounding hard ulusalcılık often extended far beyond the defence of secular institutions. It promoted an intensely state-centred understanding of citizenship. Political society was frequently divided between the supposed defenders of the Republic and groups portrayed as internal or foreign-supported threats. Religious conservatives, Kurdish political movements, liberal intellectuals, minority-rights advocates and supporters of European-oriented reform were regularly treated with suspicion. Pluralism was not always understood as the legitimate coexistence of different identities. It was often presented as a danger whenever it challenged the ideological authority of the state. Özkan became one of the principal screen faces of that political atmosphere. His public identity was built through confrontation, nationalist mobilization and a style of politics that frequently converted ordinary political disagreements into existential battles over the survival of the Republic. The terms ulusalcılık (hard-line secular nationalism) and Avrasyacılık (Eurasianism) are not identical. Not every ulusalcı has supported Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO or complete strategic alignment with Russia and China. Nevertheless, the two currents have repeatedly overlapped in their suspicion of Western institutions, European integration, liberal reformism, Kurdish political demands and internationally supported civil society. Özkan can therefore reasonably be described as one of the most prominent protagonists of the hard ulusalcı political environment from which contemporary Turkish Eurasianism drew much of its popular rhetoric and political energy. He was often identified with the CHP’s ultra-nationalist wing. That makes him an extraordinarily inappropriate symbol for a party claiming to represent democratic renewal. A party seeking support from liberals, moderate conservatives, Kurdish citizens, European-oriented social democrats and younger voters should have begun with figures associated with constitutionalism, reconciliation, institutional restraint and democratic…