Shortly after Turkey's main opposition party celebrated this month the 102nd anniversary of its founding by national hero Mustafa Kemal Atatürk -- replete with a serene performance by a string quartet -- its Istanbul office came under police attack.
While members of the Republican People's party (CHP) used office furniture to barricade themselves inside, security forces sprayed pepper gas at protesters outside so that government-friendly appointees could move in and take over the party's Istanbul branch.
"We are not OK . . . The building is being tear-gassed," Suat Özçağdaş, a member of CHP's executive committee, said in a social media feed broadcast from inside a barricaded room during Monday's seige. "They are attempting to dismantle democracy," CHP deputy chair Gökhan Günaydın added.
The storming of the building, which came after a local court removed the party's Istanbul head, marked a culmination of a sustained legal crackdown that has thrown the independence of the CHP -- and with it, potentially, the future of Turkish democracy -- into the balance.
What began in March with the arrest on corruption charges of Istanbul mayor and CHP presidential hopeful Ekrem İmamoğlu has turned into the possible evisceration of an institution that Atatürk once described as "a source of pride" and even, if probably apocryphally, his child.
Last week, an Istanbul court nullified a 2023 provincial congress that selected the CHP's Istanbul head on charges of alleged vote rigging. In a legal game of cat and mouse, the CHP has since challenged that decision.
But the fear is that the ruling set a precedent for a more consequential hearing on Monday. That may result in party chair Özgür Özel being removed from office and replaced by a government appointee or a dissident CHP politician instead.
This comes as polls continue to show that the ruling Justice & Development party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has governed Nato member Turkey for more than two decades, would lose to the CHP were an election held today.
"The CHP is under an unprecedented attack," Özel told the Financial Times. "It represents democracy, a multi-party system, and the [possibility of a] change of power in the country . . . But Erdoğan knows he can't win elections anymore. He wants weak opposition parties, like in Russia."
In effect, both cases seek to neuter the CHP by denying it the ability to select its own members. The CHP is accused in both cases of alleged "irregularities", such as cash payments, that rigged internal party votes.
The CHP vociferously denies the allegations. According to a recent survey by AREA, a polling company, 76 per cent of Turks do not believe the country's courts are impartial or independent. The government insists the Turkish judiciary is independent.
What critics describe as Turkey's deepening authoritarianism comes as Erdoğan is widely understood to want to extend his presidential rule beyond the two terms currently allowed by the constitution. The next election is scheduled for 2028.
"There is no precedent for this in Turkey's democratic history, where the main opposition party is denied internal elections, where the police take over party buildings, and dissident politicians are used to splinter a party," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey research programme at the Washington Institute. "It looks very bleak."
The legal ins and outs of the judicial onslaught are convoluted and highly contested. However, its overarching aim is simple, government critics said. "Because Erdoğan knows he cannot win the next election, he needs the opposition to lose instead," Ümit Özdağ, leader of the ultranationalist opposition Zafer party, told the FT.
First, the CHP's star politician İmamoğlu was arrested. Next, dozens of members in his team -- the party's "strategic brain" as one CHP official described it, although the government calls it a "criminal network" -- were detained. "Their loss has made our life much harder," the CHP official admitted.
The third and latest stage has been to exploit existing divisions inside the CHP by pitting its main factions against each other.
The main rival contender is a group centred on Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a 76-year-old machine politician. KK, as he is known, was party chair for 13 years. But his tenure was widely criticised and delegates voted him out in favour of Özel after he lost the 2023 presidential election to Erdoğan.
"What the government seems to want to do is not destroy the CHP but to take it over; not to eradicate it, but to neuter it," Howard Eissenstat, a professor of Middle East history at St Lawrence University in New York state, said. Turkey could then become like the joke about the Shah's Iran "where there is a 'Yes' party and a 'Yes, Sir' party."
So far, investors have seemingly taken the latest bout of political turbulence in their stride. The stock market has dropped around 6.5 per cent since it began. State-owned banks have reportedly sold around $5bn to stabilise the lira. But there has been no major run on the currency, unlike after İmamoğlu's arrest in March when the central bank hiked interest rates and spent $50bn to defend the currency.
Nor has there been an eruption of mass protests, like the tens of thousands of demonstrators who filled Istanbul's Saraçhane park after İmamoğlu's arrest -- although government officials have anticipated the possibility.
"Everyone must respect judicial decisions" and refrain from actions that could "create tension and unrest in society", justice minister Yılmaz Tunç said.
Erdoğan repeated the warning on Monday. "We will never allow our streets to be thrown into chaos, nor will we permit the peace of our people . . . to be disturbed," he said.
Atilla Yeşilada, an Istanbul-based analyst at the consultancy GlobalSource Partners, said he doubted mass protests would happen, although if they did "it could turn into a wild brush fire. There is a lot of dry tinder out there."
At party headquarters in Ankara, CHP officials are in no doubt about the challenges they face. Yet during a recent visit by the FT, there was no sign of despondency.
Strategies, such as a "perpetual Saraçhane", have been weighed. Legal manoeuvres have been planned. The chiefs of other opposition parties have stopped by to express support.
Özel, who has led the CHP through the tumult with an energy and composure that has surprised his aides, has even kept a sense of humour.
Asked by the FT if he feared being arrested and sent to jail, Özel made light of the possibility. "At least then I will be able to get some sleep," he said. "As you can see, there is no bed in my office here."