The Turkish public has recently become familiar with a legal term that could seal the fate of the largest opposition party, the Republican People's Party, or CHP. "Mutlak butlan" means absolute nullity, referring to a situation where something is considered completely void or invalid from the beginning.

This is exactly what could happen on June 30, when the trial against the CHP comes to an end.

If judges in the capital, Ankara, decide to declare the 38th party congress of the CHP null and void, the party's entire reform-minded leadership would lose its legitimacy. Turkey's oldest party, which has mobilized millions of people to protest since the imprisonment of its presidential candidate, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, in March, would be plunged into total chaos.

Following the CHP's landslide defeat in Turkey's presidential election in May 2023, there were calls for a change of leadership within the party. In particular, the self-confident Imamoglu, who defeated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's candidate three times in Istanbul, urged his party to reform.

At the party congress the following November, Imamoglu supported the current party chairman Ozgur Ozel, who prevailed against long-time chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a vote that saw all party leaders replaced.

The 76-year-old Kilicdaroglu — whom........

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