Turkey’s main opposition party elects Ozgur Ozel as new leader

By ANDREW WILKS

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s main opposition party has voted for fresh leadership, five months after a devastating election defeat that saw President Recep Tayyip Erdogan extend his two-decade rule. Ozgur Ozel replaced Kemal Kilicdaroglu after delegates of the Republican People’s Party, or the CHP, elected him as new leader. The results in a second round of voting on Sunday saw Ozel take 812 of 1,366 delegate votes. Kilicdaroglu had led the party since 2010, and ever since, the CHP failed to win a single national election, although it scored significant victories in local elections in 2019. Ozel, 49, will lead the party in local elections in March in a bid to hold onto the cities it took five years earlier.