Turkey’s recently established New Party raised more than TL 182 million⁠ ($3.8 million) from nearly 86,000 supporters in the first 48 hours of a public fundraising campaign, while several of its lawmakers pledged a month’s parliamentary salary to the initiative.

New Party lawmaker Özgür Ceylan announced on Friday that 85,975 people had contributed a total of TL 182,068,243 since the campaign was launched by party leader Özgür Özel on Wednesday.

“We thank all our citizens who have supported this major new journey,” Ceylan said. “We will continue to transparently disclose information about the donations.”

The latest figure represents a sharp increase from the campaign’s first 24 hours, when 31,934 people donated TL 113,841,910 ($2.4 million).

Dayanışma kampanyamıza 48 saatte 85.975 vatandaşımız 182.068.243₺ bağışta bulunarak iktidar yolumuza umut oldu.

Mücadelemize destek veren milletimize teşekkür ediyoruz.

Halkın iktidarını birlikte kuracağız!

Bağışlar için tek resmi sitemiz: https://t.co/Q20cqyTxpA… pic.twitter.com/BVShNyQcu5

— YENİ Parti (@yenipartiyiz) July 31, 2026

Özel announced the campaign on Wednesday, saying party membership applications would begin only after registration procedures with Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals and other state institutions were completed. Until then, he urged supporters to contribute through the party’s official donation accounts.

“The New Party was founded by the people, it will be strengthened by the people, and it will be carried to power by the people,” Özel said on X.

Several New Party lawmakers also announced that they would donate one month’s parliamentary salary to the campaign. Among them was Şanlıurfa lawmaker Mahmut Tanal.

“I am donating one month’s parliamentary salary to our party’s founding campaign,” Tanal wrote on X. “We believe solidarity sustains, sacrifice helps us grow and unity brings change.”

Other party lawmakers made similar pledges on social media, presenting the donations as a show of solidarity with the newly formed opposition party.

Under Turkish law political parties that receive at least 3 percent of the vote in a parliamentary election qualify for Treasury funding, with allocations determined by their share of the vote. State funding is tripled in parliamentary election years and doubled in local election years.

Since the New Party has not yet run in a national election, it is not eligible for Treasury funding and must rely on private donations to finance its activities.

Under Turkey’s public financing system, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is set to receive TL 2.55 billion ($53.7 million) in Treasury funding in 2026. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) will receive TL 1.82 billion ($38.2 million), followed by the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) with TL 721.5 million ($15.2 million), the İYİ (Good) Party with TL 693.9 million ($14.6 million) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) with TL 631.7 million ($13.3 million).

The New Party was established on July 24⁠, after Özel and 90 other lawmakers resigned from the CHP following a Turkish appeals court’s decision in May to annul the party’s 2023 leadership congress and reinstate former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu⁠.

The ruling ended months of litigation over allegations of vote-buying at the congress that brought Özel to the CHP leadership. Özel and his allies rejected the decision as judicial interference in opposition politics and formed the New Party.

A total of 280 former CHP lawmakers⁠ subsequently announced their resignations from the CHP in support of Özel’s new movement, deepening one of the largest splits in modern Turkish opposition politics.

Kılıçdaroğlu led the CHP for 13 years but failed to defeat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a series of national elections. His loss to Erdoğan in the 2023 presidential runoff fueled calls for change within the party and culminated in Özel unseating him at the CHP congress later that year.

Under Özel, the CHP scored sweeping victories in the 2024 local elections, retaining İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir, Turkey’s three largest cities, while taking several municipalities previously controlled by the ruling alliance.

Since then, prosecutors have launched corruption investigations targeting dozens of CHP-run municipalities, leading to the detention or arrest of numerous mayors and municipal officials, including İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s strongest political rival. The opposition says the investigations are politically motivated, while the government denies interfering in the judiciary.