By Huseyin Hayatsever
ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) will name its presidential candidate for the next election in coming months, its leader said on Tuesday in what he called a move to counter a judicial crackdown on his party.
The next presidential and parliamentary elections are not scheduled until 2028, but the opposition has repeatedly called for an early vote after recent detentions and investigations into CHP-run municipalities.
“Today, … by completing all the preparations … in February, March and April, we are starting today to say that we are ready to (counter) this evil,” Ozgur Ozel said in an address to CHP parliamentarians, alluding to the investigations.
Some 1.6 million CHP members will choose the party’s presidential candidate in an internal vote, he added.
On Monday, an Istanbul prosecutor launched another judicial investigation into the city’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a CHP member, for allegedly trying to influence the judiciary after he criticised legal inquiries into opposition-run municipalities.
Imamoglu, seen as a likely future presidential challenger to Tayyip Erdogan, accused Erdogan’s government of using the judiciary as a political tool to pressure the opposition.
Ozel said the investigations into Imamoglu showed how Erdogan’s AK Party was afraid of him.
The government denies accusations of political interference in the cases and says the judiciary is independent.
Later on Tuesday, opposition television channel Halk TV said authorities had detained its journalists Baris Pehlivan and Seda Selek, as well as its Managing Director Serhan Asker, after the broadcast of a phone call with the expert witness in the case against Imamoglu, who had publicly criticised the expert on Monday.
Pehlivan held the call with the expert and Selek was the presenter of the programme where the call, which the Istanbul prosecutors’ office said was recorded and shared illegally, was broadcast.
The pro-government daily Yeni Safak had earlier published a story quoting the expert as well.
Imamoglu said on X that the detentions were “embarrassing”, while Ozel called on CHP members in Istanbul to protest in front of the Halk TV offices.
Erdogan, re-elected last year, is serving his last term as president permitted by the constitution, unless parliament calls an early election. He has ruled Turkey for more than 21 years, first as prime minister and then as president.
An early election needs the support of 360 MPs in the 600-seat parliament. AKP and its allies command 321 seats.
The AKP spokesperson recently said that a formula for a new term for Erdogan was “on the party’s agenda,” hinting at a move to enact a constitutional amendment to make that possible.
A constitutional amendment could also be put to a referendum if 360 lawmakers endorsed it.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Sharon Singleton)
