The police operation ended a confrontation that lasted several hours on Sunday between members of the opposition CHP party and their newly court-appointed leadership, AP reports.
"Turkey has ceased to be a modern democratic republic and has turned into an authoritarian regime," CHP party leader Özgur Özel told AFP.
A court has previously annulled the 2023 congress that elected Özgur Özel as party leader, and reinstated the former leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu - the 77-year-old who was, among other things, the CHP's main candidate in the 2023 presidential election.
Support by most
However, most within the party support Özel, who, together with the leadership, had remained at the party headquarters since Thursday.
"For reasons that are inscrutable to me, he (Kilicdaroglu) is, one might say, acting on behalf of the government and seems to have urged the current party leader (Özel) to leave the headquarters," says Paul Levin, head of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University.
The CHP has been subject to several lawsuits and arrests, and trials are underway against several leading politicians. Among them is the imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who is seen as the main rival of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and whose supporters within the party largely back Özel.
Özel tells AFP that Erdogan "has lost his mind" and believes that the police storming of the CHP headquarters was part of the president's plans "to win the next election" in 2028.
Parallels to Orbán
Paul Levin notes that Turkey has long been classified by political scientists as "an authoritarian state that has largely free but unfair elections."
Levin draws parallels to the election loss of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which has been described in a similar way.
"It shows that there is a risk for an authoritarian leader in such a system. You can try to have almost total control over the media, you can manipulate the electoral system and so on, but there is always a risk that you can lose in open elections."
"I think Erdogan has made the decision that he cannot allow the same thing that happened to Orbán to happen to him."
Paul Levin says that Özgur Özel will now try to mobilize to bring about large demonstrations after the events of recent days.
