The local party organization of the far-right Good Party (İP) in Istanbul's Beylikdüzü district slammed the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) administration for including names associated with the pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) for high-ranking positions on city council candidate lists.
The İP and the CHP are running together as the Nation Alliance for the upcoming local elections in the Beylikdüzü municipality. Amid the release of the candidate lists, 22 members of the İP's local party organization resigned, protesting the Nation Alliance's siding with the HDP.
"We are nationalist. We cannot accept the fact that our members are given lower-ranking positions than HDP members," said the group of 22 members, including the vice chairman of the local party organization.
"According to alliance negotiations, three members of the İP were supposed to be given high-ranking positions on the CHP list. However, the CHP preferred to give the seventh-ranked position to someone from the HDP, while they gave one of us the 10th ranked position, the 20th and 24th ranked positions, which are impossible ranks to be elected from," Tayfun Ünlü, the İP's district secretary in Beylikdüzü, told Sabah daily.
Ünlü also said that Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the provincial head of the CHP for Istanbul, directed that at least one member from the HDP be given a high-ranking position in each city council candidate list of every municipality in İstanbul.
Meanwhile, Mehmet Kocadon, the Democrat Party (DP) mayoral candidate in southwestern Muğla's Bodrum district, harshly criticized the CHP, his former party, by saying that the chairman of the party Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu does not have political morals.
The CHP has long been criticized for its alliance with the pro-PKK HDP. The CHP has refrained from officially including the HDP, which has been condemned for its close ties with the PKK, in its electoral alliance with the İP amid fears of a possible backlash from its secular-nationalist voter base.
Some HDP members have been charged with or accused of having links to the PKK terrorist organization that has been fighting the Turkish state for more than 30 years, leaving more than 40,000 dead.
