Özgür Özel at YENİ Party congress: "We have the courage to win the election"

YENİ Party Chairman Özgür Özel said at his party's 1st Ordinary Congress in Ankara that his party "has the courage to win the elections and the skill to govern Türkiye." At the congress, convened under the slogan "Türkiye Yenileniyor," Özel described the party's founding process, its regulations on intra-party democracy, and its goals on the economy, justice, foreign policy and social peace.

Özel stated that they would complete the political founding process of the YENİ Party, which they established on 24 July, with the congress. He linked the party's emergence to judicial rulings and interventions targeting the CHP leadership; he criticized the decisions concerning the CHP's previous congresses and the police intervention at its headquarters. He referred to Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and to the mayors in prison; he announced that the mayors of Beşiktaş, Beykoz, Şişli, Büyükçekmece, Bayrampaşa, Ataşehir and Adalar had joined the YENİ Party.

Under the heading of intra-party democracy, he said they had established a system that enables members to directly elect district chairs, provincial chairs and the party chairman. Noting that district elections were held in September and provincial chair elections in October, Özel announced that they had completed the chairman primary on 8 November "in exactly 2,502 ballot boxes, with a record turnout of 82 percent of our more than 800,000 members." He recorded that the party had reached approximately 800,000 members. He stated that the Party Council would consist of three sections: the Party Legislative Group, the Party Organization Group and the Policy Development Group.

In the economy section, he said they aimed to raise the minimum wage above the hunger threshold, to ease the burden of wage increases on employers with state support, and to raise the lowest pension to the level of the minimum wage. He promised to cap rent in social housing at 25 percent of household income, to reduce indirect taxes, and to base taxation on income and wealth. In agriculture, he pledged a purchase guarantee for farmers, the removal of taxes on diesel, and the erasure of interest on farmers' debts and their restructuring over five years.

In the section he devoted to the judiciary, he said, "Detention is not a method of advance punishment. It is the last resort," and used the phrase, "We will build a judicial system that no one can ever seize again." He summarized his understanding of justice under the headings "Justice in the courts, justice in income, justice in taxation, justice in social life." He described the headscarf and cemevi issues as two sides of the problem of equal citizenship; he characterized 19 March 2025 and 21 May 2026 as "political coups." Pledging to bring the Istanbul Convention back into force in the fight against violence against women and to apply international occupational health and safety standards in mines and other workplaces, Özel reiterated his "Türkiye İttifakı" call.