opposition changes leader after defeat by Erdogan

The main Turkish opposition party replaced its leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu on Sunday, November 5, with Ozgür Ozel, a former pharmacist who is still inexperienced, following a bitter electoral defeat against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Republican People’s Party (CHP, social-democrat) has been divided since its candidate lost a bitterly contested second round against the Turkish president in May.

At the party’s annual congress, delegates voted to replace Kemal Kiliçdaroglu by the relatively unknown Ozgür Ozel, after squandering what many saw as the opposition’s best chance to oust President Erdogan. The unsuccessful candidate in the last presidential election, aged 74, lost his leadership post after two heated rounds of voting at the party congress, in favor of a candidate supported by the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu.

Ozgür Ozel spent much of his career working as a pharmacist in the tourist city of Izmir, an opposition stronghold. He later became president of the Pharmacists Association of Turkey and was elected to Parliament in 2011. The 49-year-old speaker won the final vote by 812 votes to 536, after presenting himself as the candidate of the “change”. But the vote was much more focused on the personalities of the two men than on particular political orientations.