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Dodging a trial into its shady intraparty election in 2023 for now, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is still embattled amid a spate of investigations into its mayors who are being tried for corruption. The party will hold its 39th ordinary convention in late November and now aims to reshuffle its main cadres by picking up names with immunity, namely, lawmakers.
The party’s ruling assembly is expected to undergo significant changes in the upcoming convention. The administration under Chairperson Özgür Özel plans to sideline some assembly members suggested by former Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, an influential figure in the party, who nominated him as a future presidential candidate. They will likely be replaced by lawmakers who enjoy immunity from prosecution. Thus, the CHP hopes no senior administration official would be tried for any wrongdoing.
Özel’s current policy is to keep several lawmakers already serving in the administration to contribute to the CHP’s campaign to portray investigations against the party as politically motivated. The said lawmakers will be provided a “political shield,” according to reports.
CHP deputy chairs and lawmakers Burhanettin Bulut and Özgür Karabat, whose names appeared in an indictment for bribery of municipalities by Aziz Ihsan Aktaş, a businessman accused of illegally securing municipal tenders, will remain in their posts. Turan Taşkın Özer, head of the CHP’s high disciplinary board and a lawmaker, will also keep this post, months after prosecutors sought to lift his immunity in a corruption investigation. Özer and Karabat are close associates of Imamoğlu, while Bulut has close ties to Özel.
Baki Aydöner, a member of CHP’s party assembly who was recently arrested in the corruption investigation into Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB), worried CHP, with Özel’s lieutenants pointing out that Aydöner could have gotten away if he had immunity. Aydöner was arrested after a businessperson collaborating with authorities confessed in June that the CHP member had asked him to pay bribes to secure payments of IBB’s debts to the businessperson. The businessperson told investigators that he handed over two precious plots of land to Aydöner as a bribe.
Adem Soytekin, a businessperson with links to Imamoğlu, has also confessed that the former mayor’s lawyer warned them before the operations that ended with Imamoğlu’s arrest, and they transferred illicitly gained money through bribes to Turan Taşkın Özer, who had immunity.
