Özlem Çerçioğlu
Turkish statesperson (born 1968)
Özlem Çerçioğlu (born 11 August 1968) is a Turkish politician who has served as the mayor of Aydın since 2009. She has been a member of the IslamistJustice and Development Party (AKP) since 2025, after previously spending 23 years in the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP). While with the CHP, she became Aydın’s first female mayor. Her 2025 switch to the AKP sparked significant political controversy and criticism from CHP supporters.
She was born in Nazilli, a district of Aydın, in 1968. She graduated from Selçuk University in 1988. She served as a member of the Grand National Assembly from 2002 to 2009 during the 22nd and 23rd legislative terms, representing Aydın for the CHP. She was elected as mayor of Aydın in 2009, becoming the first female mayor of the metropolitan municipality, and was re-elected again in 2014 and 2019.
On 14 August 2025, Çerçioğlu left the CHP for the ruling AKP due to internal party issues while expressing her desire to serve "under the patronage of Erdoğan." Çerçioğlu's resignation from her party of 23 years, where she had served two terms in parliament and four terms as mayor, drew criticism from the provincial and district branches of the CHP in Aydın. On the same day, the CHP Provincial Presidency organized a rally titled “Aydın Stands for its Will” in front of the Aydın Metropolitan Municipality building to protest her decision. CHP leader Özgür Özel accused Çerçioğlu of leaving the party due to threats from the ruling government and that her defection was a "stealing of votes".
“Özlem Çerçioğlu” enters the record as turkish statesperson (born 1968). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Özlem, Çerçioğlu and Turkish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6061075. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2009, 2025 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Özlem Çerçioğlu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.