CHP leader to appoint a new party brass after congress

ANKARA

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), will renew the party’s top executive brass after the election of a new party assembly as some of his key right-hand men, like deputy leaders Tuncay Özkan and Ünal Çeviköz, failed to garner sufficient support at a congress over the weekend.

Some 1,356 delegates voted for the 60-member Party Assembly of the CHP at the weekend convention of the social democrat party which re-elected Kılıçdaroğlu to leadership for the sixth time.

The Party Assembly is the highest body of the CHP after the general convention, and its Central Executive Board (MYK) is composed of around a dozen Party Assembly members selected by the chairman.

Kılıçdaroğlu will now appoint a new MYK out of the Party Assembly members as the delegates have omitted three key members of the MYK, deputy leaders Tuncay Özkan, Ünal Çeviköz and Yıldırım Kaya of Kılıçdaroğlu’s Party Assembly list. Özkan was responsible for media relations, while Çeviköz for the CHP’s external relations.

The CHP’s prominent figures Akif Hamzaçebi, Sezgin Tanrıkulu and Aykut Erdoğdu were also names who failed to get enough support from the delegates.

CHP deputy leader and party spokesman Faik Öztrak has received the highest votes from the delegates, followed by deputy leader Bülent Kuşoğlu, Ali Öztunç and Rıfat Nalbantoğlu.

A final list of the Party Assembly will be announced after the conclusion of the vote-counting process when the gender and youth quotas get determined.