The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and right-wing Good Party (İP) have agreed in principle to continue their political alliance for the local elections next March, İP Vice Chairman Koray Aydın said Wednesday.
"We agreed on determining the fundamental principles of the alliance and drew a road map that is in line with our agreement," Aydın said in a press briefing held after his meeting with Bülent Tezcan, a member of CHP's Party Assembly.
Aydın said that they discussed the strategies for some metropolitan municipalities but did not discuss the names of potential candidates. He added that dividing the election districts was not on the agenda of the meeting either but hinted that the parties may discuss it in the near future.
İP General Secretary Cihan Paçacı said that he hopes the alliance with CHP will bring positive results in terms of voters and ballots.
Leaders and delegations from both parties have been meeting for some time now, signaling the continuation of the Nation Alliance that was formed ahead of the June 24 general elections.
Media reports have suggested that the two parties will support each other's candidates in different districts while they will field joint candidates in the metropolitan municipalities like Istanbul and Ankara.
CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu told the BBC on Wednesday that they will not abstain from fielding candidates for the sake of the alliance and added that municipalities where İP usually receives a high percentage of votes, the CHP will support the İP's candidates.
İP Chairwoman Meral Akşener also told the same program that the alliance discussions were mainly focused on 17 metropolitan municipalities where the population voted "No" in the constitutional referendum on April 16 of last year.The Nation Alliance between the CHP, the İP, the Felicity Party (SP) and the center-right Democrat Party (DP) received 33.9 percent of the votes in the June 24 parliamentary elections. It suffered a defeat at the hands of the People's Alliance, between the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) which received 53.7 percent of the votes.
