Özgür Özel tells Tekirdağ crowd: “We are on the right side, with the people and against the AK Party”

A planned walk through businesses in Tekirdağ turned into a mass street appearance for Özgür Özel, after the crowd became too large for the visit to go ahead. The CHP leader then addressed residents and said his party stood “on the right side, with the people and against the AK Party.”

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If the CHP changes, Turkey changes.

Özel presented the party's recent electoral performance as the result of a transformation that began after the disappointment of the 2023 elections. He said the CHP had concluded that “if the CHP changes, Turkey changes,” and credited Tekirdağ and the wider Thrace region with standing firmly behind that effort.

He recalled promising to repeat Bülent Ecevit's success in making his party the leading force in four elections. Critics, he said, expected him to leave after failing to deliver. Instead, Özel said, the CHP won 411 municipalities, took 65% of Turkey's population and all of the Aegean region, and became the country's leading party for the first time in 47 years. He described the result as the AK Party's first defeat and said the CHP would change the government at the next election.

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We are on the right side. We are on the people's side. We are against the AK Party.

Özel then turned to what he called the largest attack on a party in the history of the republic. He accused opponents of trying to strip the CHP of candidates, institutions and leadership through the judiciary. He referred to legal action beginning in Esenyurt and extending to 36 mayors, as well as imprisonment and detention involving presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. He ended by asking those listening where they stood, saying history would remember both those who took the right side and those who became tools of an alleged AK Party plot.

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We introduced the AK Party to its first defeat.