Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won every national election since 2002. In 2024 his party lost the local elections to the secular Republican People's Party, which holds Istanbul, Ankara and most large cities. A year later the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, the politician polls showed beating Erdogan, was arrested on corruption charges on the day his party named him its presidential candidate. Since then more than a dozen opposition mayors have been jailed, and a court has removed the party's own leadership. The government says the courts are doing their work. The opposition says they are doing the president's.
Turkey's wider position and each side's full account: Turkey's independent course.
Where it stands · September 2026
In September 2026 four CHP council members in İstanbul's Üsküdar district left the party for the AK Party. On 23 September Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş quit the CHP and said he would continue as an independent. On 30 September the CHP expelled a member after an incident in China. The governing party holds the presidency and the parliament; the CHP remains the main opposition. Mansur Yavaş now sits as an independent. The CHP has lost officeholders to the governing party and to independent status.
What the dispute is about
Are the cases real. Prosecutors describe a criminal organisation that rigged municipal tenders, with witnesses from inside the opposition. The opposition points to the timing, to the annulment of Imamoglu's university degree, which a candidate must hold, and to the absence of any such cases against governing-party mayors.
Who controls the judges. Since a referendum in 2017 the president and his parliamentary majority appoint the body that appoints and promotes judges and prosecutors.
Whether elections can still change the government. They changed the cities in 2019 and 2024. The next presidential vote is due in 2028, and the constitution bars Erdogan from standing unless it is amended or parliament calls the election early.
