After a bitter election defeat against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s largest opposition party replaced its leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu on Sunday with a former and still inexperienced pharmacist.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP, Social Democrat) has been divided since Mr Kiliçdaroglu lost a hard-fought second round to the Turkish president in May.
At the party’s annual congress, delegates voted to replace Mr. Kiliçdaroglu with the relatively unknown Ozgur Özel after squandering what many viewed as the opposition’s best chance to end two decades of Islamic rule. -Conservative of Mr. Erdogan.
May’s elections came amid a severe cost-of-living crisis that analysts attribute to Erdogan’s unorthodox economic beliefs.
Mr. Kiliçdaroglu managed to bring together a diverse alliance that included both right-wing nationalists and left-wing socialists and Kurds.
But months before the election, the six-party bloc almost fell apart and performed poorly in the polls afterward.
For his part, thanks to the support of Islamic and ultra-nationalist groups, Mr. Erdogan managed to consolidate his control over parliament.
Mr Kiliçdaroglu then angered many within his own party by refusing to admit defeat and resign.
The unsuccessful candidate in the last presidential election, 74, lost his leadership post in favor of a candidate backed by Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu after two heated rounds of voting at the party congress.
Mr. Özel spent much of his career as a pharmacist in the tourist city of Izmir (west), a stronghold of opposition to Mr. Erdogan.
He later became president of the Turkish Pharmacists Association 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 a “change” candidate.
However, the vote focused much more on the personalities of the two men than on specific policies.
Mr. Kiliçdaroglu compared the attempts to oust him to a “stab in the back,” while Mr. Özel emphasized his desire to “write a new history and reshape Turkish politics.”