Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli on Thursday said the party will not nominate its own candidate for the Istanbul mayoral race in the 2019 local elections.
Bahçeli said the decision was influenced by the previous election results in Turkey's commercial capital.
"Is there any point in nominating a candidate, saying 'We too have a candidate,' in a place where we will not win?" Bahçeli said, adding, however, that MHP candidates will compete in districts.
The party has not, however, decided on the whether a candidate will be nominated for the capital Ankara and the country's third most-populated province on the west coast, Izmir, Bahçeli added.
Ahead of snap general election on June 24, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the MHP formed an election alliance called the People's Alliance, which ultimately received 53.6 percent of the votes.
As part of the alliance, MHP also supported the AK Party's presidential candidate, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who won with 52.6 percent of the votes.
Although no official decisions have been announced by the AK Party and the MHP, both have made positive remarks about the possibility of an alliance in the upcoming elections.
Bahçeli stressed that having a candidate competing against one from the AK Party does not violate the spirit of the alliance.
Meanwhile, the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the far-right Good Party (IP) have both said that a political alliance for the 2019 municipal elections was not on their agendas, despite speculations that there might be one.
The CHP and IP, along with the Felicity Party (SP) and the Democrat Party (DP) were part of the Nation Alliance for the June 24 elections.
