Turkey’s Justice March, led by the main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, crescendoed on its 25th day in the Istanbul suburb of Maltepe with a mass rally that drew well over a million people protesting authoritarian rule in the country.

In his address to the crowds assembled at the Sea of Marmara, where his nemesis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has stumped many times, Kilicdaroglu called his grueling 432-kilometer march from the capital, Ankara, “our first step” and a “rebirth.”

Though the 69-year-old leader of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) lacks Erdogan’s oratory skills and charisma, he drew wild cheers as he took aim at Erdogan and the climate of repression that has sharply intensified since last summer’s coup attempt. Kilicdaroglu read out a 10-point manifesto demanding, among other things, that the state of emergency declared after the coup be lifted, that judicial independence be restored and that some 150 journalists and over a dozen members of parliament be freed. 

“How lovely it is to stand shoulder to shoulder again … to say ‘enough.’” wrote Aydin Selcen, a former Turkish diplomat in his column for the independent online news portal Duvar. "Kilicdaroglu … reminded us that we are not guests in this country but its owners."