Politics
MHP set to start where Atatürk also did for congress
Türkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) will launch its congress process on May 19 in Samsun’s Ilkadım district, linking the event symbolically to the anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s arrival in the Black Sea city that marked the beginning of country’s War of Independence.
MHP Deputy Chairperson Semih Yalçın announced the decision in a written statement on Tuesday, saying the date and location were chosen to reflect both the spirit of the national struggle and the party’s political vision of a “terror-free Türkiye.”
“The First Step Congress coinciding with the 107th anniversary of Atatürk’s arrival in Samsun carries symbolic significance,” Yalçın said. “Samsun’s Ilkadım represents the spirit of the National Struggle, the reflex that gives life to the idea of a terror-free Türkiye, and the determination for national survival embodied by the nationalist movement.”
The congress process follows a decision made during the party’s Central Executive Board meeting on April 27, with local congresses officially beginning on May 7 ahead of the party’s grand congress scheduled for March 7, 2027.
Yalçın described the phrase “first step” as a historic concept associated with freedom, independence and national unity, referring to Atatürk’s arrival in Samsun on May 19, 1919, to organize resistance against occupying forces following World War I.
He said the MHP frequently uses concepts rooted in Turkish history to strengthen political dialogue and public engagement.
Yalçın also linked the congress theme to MHP leader Devlet Bahceli’s recent calls for a “Terror-Free Türkiye,” describing the initiative as a major political step aimed at reinforcing national unity amid growing regional instability and security threats.
“In a period when terrorism has been used as a political tool and external threats against Türkiye’s national survival are increasing, Devlet Bahçeli’s call for a terror-free Türkiye is a massive first step toward national consensus,” he said.
The senior MHP official argued that recent developments across the Middle East have validated the party’s emphasis on strengthening the nation-state structure.
“As the MHP, we see a strong nation-state structure not only for Türkiye but also for all threatened regional states as an antidote to colonialism,” Yalçın said.
He added that preserving the state structures of countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon was also vital for Türkiye’s own security.
The MHP is part of Türkiye’s ruling alliance alongside the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and has played a central role in nationalist and security-focused political discourse in recent years.
German lawmaker Maximilian Krah recently said parliamentary officials had twice blocked planned visits to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), arguing that Turkish Cypriots and their institutions deserved international recognition.
Speaking to Bayrak Radio Television (BRT), Krah noted he and his fellow lawmaker Achim Köhler had submitted two requests to Germany’s parliamentary Human Rights Committee to visit the territory, but both were rejected.
“They stopped us, but we will come anyway,” Krah emphasized, alleging that some political circles in Germany did not want lawmakers to examine conditions on the island firsthand.
Krah described the current status quo in Cyprus as unsustainable and said previous settlement efforts had failed because of the Greek Cypriot side’s position. He argued that Turkish Cypriots had established functioning state institutions and a legal system that merited recognition.
He linked renewed international attention on Cyprus to Türkiye’s growing geopolitical role, the strategic importance of the eastern Mediterranean and continuing human rights debates.
Krah called for a settlement that protects the rights of both communities, including property rights, while promoting peace in the eastern Mediterranean.
He called the decision to block the visits “hypocrisy.”
The lawmaker, who served six years in the European Parliament, currently sits on the Bundestag’s European Affairs Committee and serves as rapporteur on Cyprus and Türkiye.
A new bill proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which calls for life imprisonment for perpetrators of serious offenses committed between the ages of 15 and 18, was approved by Parliament’s Justice Committee early Wednesday.
The bill is one of the most comprehensive legislative packages addressing children involved in crime. Its most notable provision is the introduction of life sentences for offenders as young as 15, although such sentences would remain at the court’s discretion.
Murders committed by minors and the increasing use of children by criminal gangs to carry out shootings have come under the spotlight in Türkiye in recent years.
A series of fatal stabbing incidents involving teenagers has intensified public debate over youth violence and the factors driving minors toward crime. One of the most widely reported cases occurred on Jan. 24, 2025, when 14-year-old Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi was stabbed by a 15-year-old attacker at a street market in Istanbul. Minguzzi died on Feb. 9 after spending 16 days in intensive care.
Just two months later, another fatal stabbing shocked the public in the northern province of Tokat, where 17-year-old national athlete Berkay Melikoğlu was killed.
In one of the most recent incidents, 17-year-old Atlas Çağlayan died after being stabbed during an argument in Istanbul on Jan. 14, with initial findings indicating that the suspect was 15 years old.
Briefing the committee during deliberations on the bill, Mehmet Ökmen, director general of legislation at the Justice Ministry, disclosed statistics on children driven to crime.
“Investigations were launched into 187,300 children in 2025. The total number of alleged offenses in these investigations stands at 412,775. However, this does not mean that all of these children will be convicted or sent to prison,” Ökmen said.
Ökmen also shared data on recidivism rates among both children and adults. According to the data, individuals, whether juveniles or adults, who commit theft are likely to commit the same type of offense repeatedly. In contrast, children who get into one-on-one fights with classmates or friends at school, in the classroom, in dormitories or at training courses generally have a very low rate of repeating such behavior.
Referring to increased penalties for parents whose actions lead to their children becoming involved in the criminal justice system, Ökmen cited a court ruling from Germany as an example.
“In Germany, a father noticed traffic signs that had been removed from the streets in his child’s room but did nothing about it. When a fatal traffic accident later occurred because those signs were missing, the court held the father responsible,” Ökmen said.
Officials also shared additional figures with the parliamentary committee.
There are currently 1,372 convicted juveniles and 3,191 juveniles in pretrial detention in the 12-18 age group. Another 10,700 children are under probation supervision.
As of 2025, 78,733 counseling and rehabilitation sessions have been conducted as part of rehabilitation efforts. Authorities held 16,238 family meetings, while 2,541 children participated in group counseling or intervention programs. A total of 1,033 training courses were organized, with 11,595 participants enrolled.
In 2025, courts issued 97,881 protective measures concerning children. Of these, 43,270 were counseling measures, 23,612 were education measures, 23,251 were health-related measures, 7,710 were care measures, and 72 were shelter or accommodation measures.
There are currently 2,300 specialists working in juvenile education centers and prisons, including 990 psychologists, 208 social workers and 369 sociologists. Officials announced that by the end of the year, the system will be reinforced with 427 additional specialists, including 290 psychologists, 10 child development specialists, 52 social workers and 75 teachers.
Authorities detained an Eyüpsultan deputy mayor and two municipal officials on Wednesday as part of an expanding corruption investigation centered on the opposition-run Çankaya Municipality in the Turkish capital, prosecutors said.
The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said Eyüpsultan Deputy Mayor Hasan Karabulut, Eyüpsultan Municipality Chief of Staff Güray Geçyatan and Benan Esengül were taken into custody in connection with the investigation.
The latest detentions follow a July 11 operation targeting the Republican People’s Party (CHP)-run Çankaya Municipality in Ankara. Çankaya Mayor Hüseyin Can Güner was among dozens of suspects detained during the operation.
A court later ordered the arrest of Güner and 23 other suspects pending trial, and Türkiye’s Interior Ministry subsequently suspended Güner from office.
Prosecutors are investigating Güner and a total of 35 suspects on allegations including establishing and membership in a criminal organization, bribery and bid-rigging in public tenders.
The prosecutor’s office announced the investigation remains ongoing.
Güner, 32, graduated from Ankara University’s Faculty of Law in 2015 and joined the CHP in 2012. He served in various party positions before being elected mayor of Çankaya in the March 2024 local elections. He was also elected to the CHP’s Party Assembly in 2023.
Dozens of mayors and municipal bureaucrats from the CHP were detained or arrested in the past two years in investigations focusing on corruption. The majority of allegations involve bribery in return of construction permits, which are otherwise subject to strict regulations, and rigging the lucrative tenders of municipalities.
Turkish authorities detained 355 irregular migrants and 25 suspected migrant smugglers during nationwide inspections across all 81 provinces, the Interior Ministry announced Wednesday, as the government continued its crackdown on irregular migration and human smuggling networks.
The ministry said the operation involved identity checks on 427,968 people and inspections at 14,142 locations, including abandoned buildings, public venues, transportation terminals and other sites believed to be used by migrant smugglers.
According to the ministry, the operation was coordinated by the Directorate of Migration Management, the National Police’s Anti-Migrant Smuggling and Border Gates Department, the Gendarmerie’s Anti-Migrant Smuggling and Human Trafficking Department and the Coast Guard Command.
More than 26,000 personnel, supported by 8,785 teams, carried out inspections at 5,400 operational points. Authorities said 3,795 abandoned buildings, 7,447 public venues, 449 transportation terminals and 2,451 additional locations were searched.
The ministry said three of the 25 suspected migrant smugglers detained were foreign nationals. Procedures to deport the 355 irregular migrants have been initiated, it added.
Separately in an operation carried out in Istanbul on the same day, the police detained 39 irregular migrants and four suspected migrant smugglers.
Police said officers from Istanbul’s Anti-Migrant Smuggling and Border Gates Division stopped two vehicles in the Fatih district after receiving information that they were transporting irregular migrants. Two suspects and nine migrants were detained, while officers also seized an inflatable boat believed to have been used in smuggling activities.
Investigators later identified three so-called “shock houses” safe houses allegedly used to shelter migrants before onward transportation in the Fatih and Bahçelievler districts. Simultaneous raids at the locations resulted in the detention of two additional suspects and 30 irregular migrants.
The migrants were transferred to the Provincial Directorate of Migration Management for processing, while judicial procedures against the four suspects remain ongoing.
Türkiye’s Justice Ministry announced on Monday the establishment of specialized terrorism investigation units within provincial prosecutors’ offices across the country in an effort to improve coordination, consistency and efficiency in terrorism-related investigations.
According to a directive prepared on the instructions of Justice Minister Akın Gürlek and signed by Deputy Justice Minister Can Tuncay, dedicated Terror Crimes Investigation Bureaus will be established within provincial chief public prosecutors’ offices. The directive was sent to 175 chief public prosecutors’ offices with heavy penal court jurisdiction in all 81 provinces.
Under the new system, prosecutors assigned to the bureaus will handle only terrorism-related cases and will not be assigned other prosecutorial duties, including court appearances, on-call shifts or unrelated investigations.
The directive said terrorism offenses directly affect public security, social order, the constitutional system and the country’s territorial integrity, emphasizing that investigations should be conducted promptly, carefully and in accordance with existing legislation.
All terrorism-related investigations will be carried out through the newly established bureaus. District prosecutors’ offices will be permitted to conduct urgent investigative procedures only upon instruction from the relevant provincial prosecutor’s office, after which case files must be transferred without delay.
The measure is an administrative directive governing the internal division of work within prosecutors’ offices rather than a legislative amendment.
Specialized terrorism investigation bureaus already operate in major courthouses, including those in Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakır and Van. The new directive expands that model to all chief public prosecutors’ offices with heavy penal court jurisdiction across Türkiye and requires prosecutors assigned to those bureaus to work exclusively on terrorism-related cases.
The Justice Ministry also ordered the creation of a monthly coordination mechanism between prosecutors and law enforcement agencies. Meetings, coordinated by the ministry’s General Directorate of Criminal Affairs, will bring together officials from the Interior Ministry’s police and gendarmerie counterterrorism departments to review ongoing investigations, developments involving terrorist organizations and operational priorities.
The ministry said monthly nationwide statistics on terrorism investigations will also be compiled and shared with relevant security institutions before the coordination meetings to support intelligence sharing and policy planning.
Turkish authorities said the measures are designed to strengthen institutional coordination among prosecutors’ offices and improve the effectiveness of terrorism investigations.
Opposition lawmaker Özgür Özel on Tuesday delivered what he described as his final address from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) parliamentary group, announcing his new political party as he formally signaled his departure from the country’s main opposition party. His exit marks a new era in the opposition, which is probably the most fragmented ever in the brief history of the Republic of Türkiye. It comes about two months after Özel was ousted from the chairmanship of CHP by a court verdict that reinstated his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to the top post in Türkiye’s oldest party.
Opening his speech (apparently his last as the parliamentary group chair of the party) with an emotional farewell, Özel told lawmakers he had taken the podium “with the sadness of a farewell whose time has come,” describing the moment as “a historic crossroads” for both himself and Turkish politics. Özel counts on CHP’s success in the 2024 municipal elections to finally bring CHP to power after successive defeats to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
Addressing supporters, Özel said the newly formed party would emerge as the country’s main opposition party by a wide margin, among the slogans “Istiklal (Independence)” by a fervent audience, the rumored name of his new party. For weeks, he and his supporters were touting opinion polls reportedly showing his camp within the CHP ahead, long before he vaguely implied a new party. Retaining the position of main opposition party will require more than three dozen lawmakers, and although several CHP lawmakers openly sided with Özel, none has formally resigned from the CHP so far.
Reflecting on developments within the CHP since November 2023, Özel remarked that the events of the past several years would occupy an important place in Türkiye’s political history. He argued that while political victories and defeats would eventually become part of the historical record, the conduct of political actors during the period would also be remembered.
“When everything is over, we will not forget,” Özel warned. “No one should think that the attitudes, actions or conspiracies of today will simply be forgotten with time.” He was referring to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who accepted the job as the party’s chair, amid protests of pro-Özel members of the party who branded him a “traitor.”
Around the same time Özel was announcing his resignation, Kılıçdaroğlu was visiting Rüzgarlı (Windy) Street of Ankara, a hub of shops selling construction materials. Earlier, he convened around a breakfast table at a cooperative of shopkeepers, hearing their economic complaints, strictly distancing himself from Özel’s agenda. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who spent the past two days in Istanbul at his residence, also had no scheduled events, fitting with his earlier comments on CHP’s divide, which he branded as a strictly internal matter of the opposition.
Path to new party
Özel said the split within the CHP stemmed from disagreements over the party’s future following its declining public support.
He said some within the party argued for maintaining the current course and focusing on the next local elections, while others warned that the CHP risked losing voters unless it embraced change.
Reiterating the current situation of the main opposition: “People will not go into another local election with us if we continue like this. If we act this way, they will turn their backs on us. Voter turnout will fall to a historic low. Don’t you see the polls? The party has dropped to around 13% or 14% and continues to decline,” Özel criticized, “A major defeat is coming. After another local election disaster, people will lose hope in the ballot box altogether. We have to act.'”
Özel said that disagreement marked the point at which party members “went their separate ways,” adding that he continued to value those who later joined his push for change as much as those who supported it from the outset. The Özel camp was fighting for a petition to hold a new congress in the CHP, assured that Özel would win the next intraparty election against Kılıçdaroğlu.
Challenge to Kılıçdaroğlu
In one of the most notable moments of his speech, Özel challenged CHP Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, saying the party’s leadership should be decided directly by members.
“Let’s put a ballot box in front of the delegates from either congress, or before all 2 million party members, and let them decide who should lead the party,” Özel said. “If I receive less than 90% support, I will consider it a vote of no confidence and step aside. Are you willing to do the same?”
Özel described the launch of his new party as “opening a new path” after a court ruling declaring the previous CHP congress legally null and void, saying the decision to leave was “not a choice, but a necessity.”
He said 61 days had passed since the court’s ruling and accused party leaders of believing public criticism would quickly subside.
“We can either remain trapped in this deadlock and disappoint the people, or we can untie these knots one by one and clear the way for the country,” Özel said.
He added that throughout his years as CHP deputy parliamentary group chair and parliamentary group leader, he had defended the party’s legacy and values, and had fought through legal, political and public channels to protect them before concluding that a new political path had become unavoidable.
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