ANKARA (Reuters) — Turkey’s major opposition Republican Other people’s Celebration (CHP) past due on Saturday elected Ozgur Ozel as its new chief, finishing a 13-year time period for incumbent Kemal Kilicdaroglu, as the rustic gears for vital native elections in March 2024.
Ozel, 49, has been serving because the CHP’s deputy parliamentary team chairman since 2015 and has been a lawmaker since 2011. He introduced his candidacy in September, after Kilicdaroglu and the CHP’s painful defeat to President Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling political alliance in Would possibly presidential and basic elections.
Ozel gained 812 of one,366 imaginable votes at a hectic, hours-long birthday celebration congress in Ankara that took two rounds.
“That is the best honour of my existence,” Ozel mentioned after the consequences had been introduced, including he thanked Kilicdaroglu for his paintings on the birthday celebration. “We’re embarking at the street for native election victory,” he added.
“We’ve believed in turning hopelessness into hope, we’re hopeful,” Ozel mentioned, surrounded by means of applauding birthday celebration individuals and status along Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.
Kilicdaroglu had come underneath hearth since his election defeat for refusing to step down because the chief of the CHP, established by means of trendy Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Beneath his 13-year time period, the CHP did not surpass a historical ceiling of 25% national strengthen.
“I carried our Nice Chief Ataturk’s legacy with honour till nowadays,” Kilicdaroglu mentioned on social messaging platform X after the consequences, and congratulated Ozel. “And nowadays, with the verdict our congress delegates made, I say good-bye to the submit of chairman.”
Ozel will now lead the CHP into native elections on March 31, the place the birthday celebration hopes to stay dangle of the important thing municipalities it received in 2019, together with the capital Ankara, Turkey’s largest town Istanbul, and different primary towns.
