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Cemil Tugay, the mayor of Izmir, resigned from Türkiye's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) on Thursday, citing a wave of expulsions and what he called an unacceptable erosion of the party's democratic will. His deputy mayor, Levent Yildir, resigned his CHP membership in parallel. Tugay said he would continue serving as mayor on an independent basis.
The resignations mark the end of an unbroken 23-year CHP hold on Izmir, a western coastal city long regarded as the party's most reliable urban stronghold.
Tugay, announcing his decision via social media, stopped short of abandoning his elected post but said the conditions inside the party had become intolerable.
Tugay's departure is the latest consequence of a deepening institutional crisis that has convulsed the CHP since late May. On May 21, the Ankara Regional Court of Appeals annulled the party's 38th Ordinary Congress, held in November 2023, on grounds of "absolute nullity," a legal finding that treats the congress as though it never legally took place.
The ruling suspended current party leader Ozgur Ozel and the party's central executive and disciplinary bodies, and provisionally restored former leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and the pre-2023 party organs to their positions.
The court based its ruling on allegations that delegates were offered cash, consumer goods and municipal employment in exchange for their votes during a congress that Ozel won by just 18 ballots over Kilicdaroglu.
The council declined to review the matter. Police subsequently removed Ozel and other party executives from CHP headquarters in Ankara by force.
In his resignation statement, Tugay expressed particular outrage at the removal of the Izmir provincial party chairman, which he described as "a grave injustice done to Izmir's political will and an unacceptable wrong."
Tugay framed his decision as one reached after exhausting all other options. He noted that he had previously signed a petition calling for an emergency congress and had hoped the party could return to what he called a "normal democratic environment" through internal means.
"I understand and see that our good-faith efforts will not yield results within the time we hoped," he wrote, adding that he would remain part of the broader struggle for a CHP free of "tutelage and manipulation," even if the party in its current form could not serve as the vehicle for it.
He ended his statement with a notable qualifier: "with the hope of one day being able to return."
Tugay had flatly ruled out resigning just days earlier. In remarks that circulated widely before his announcement Thursday, he said leaving the CHP would mean abandoning "the political roof under which voters chose us," and that no individual in the party should act unilaterally while a congress process remained possible.
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