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TURKEY-POLITICS-BAHCELI
Turkish nationalist leader ends alliance with Erdogan party
ANKARA, Oct 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The leader of Turkey’s main nationalist
faction on Tuesday announced he was pulling out of an electoral alliance with
the ruling party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a dispute over a
proposed amnesty law.
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of Devlet Bahceli teamed up with the
Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Erdogan for an alliance in June’s
simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections, a move widely seen as
aiding the president’s victory.
But speaking to MHP members and lawmakers in parliament, Bahceli announced
there would be no such alliance for the March 31 local elections which will
determine city mayors across the country, notably in Ankara and Istanbul.
The rupture comes after the MHP pushed the AKP to agree to a mass amnesty
— mostly for common criminals but also some mobsters — an idea received
with little enthusiasm in the ruling party.
“No alliance can survive if one party is rejected and forced to step
back,” Bahceli said. “There is no meaning in extending this process, which
has become chronic.”
“We no longer have any expectation or intention for an alliance in the
local elections,” he added.
While the two parties teamed up for the formal alliance in the elections,
the MHP has no ministers in the cabinet and is not part of a formal alliance
in parliament with the AKP, which is just short of an overall majority.
Nevertheless Bahceli’s move could upset the strategy of the ruling party
to hoover up nationalist votes in order to prevent them going to the other
nationalist party — the Good Party — of former cabinet minister Meral
Aksener who openly opposes Erdogan.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1524 hrs