The Good Party (IP) responded to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chairperson Devlet Bahçeli’s call to cooperate in Türkiye’s upcoming municipal elections next year with a vague answer, which did not accept or reject the invitation.
In a statement, the party’s spokesperson Kürşat Zorlu said the IP invites everyone to join his party.
“We invite the pure-hearted people of our country, the nationalists and patriots and Türkiye-lovers to join the Good Party,” Zorlu said.
The statement did not reject or accept MHP’s call to join forces and instead pointed to party Chairwoman Meral Akşener’s planned announcement on Aug. 26.
“We called on you to return home but you didn’t so let us become neighbors at the municipal level for the benefit of our country,” Bahçeli said was quoted as saying by Ismail Özdemir, the deputy-head of his party’s public relations office in a message broadcast on CNN Türk on Thursday.
Özdemir noted that Bahçeli made similar appeals in the past, calling on former MHP members who transferred to the IP to return to the MHP.
The IP is an offshoot of the MHP, formed when a group of party members split from the party due to Bahçeli's cooperation with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Having failed to dislodge Bahçeli in a heated judicial process, MHP dissidents left the party in 2016 and established the IP under Meral Akşener's leadership in October 2017.
Much like its parent party, the IP had a nationalist stance, yet drifted away from its initial raison d'etre by cooperating with the center left-secular main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).
An IP member close to the party's Akşener earlier on Thursday said the party was neither searching for nor offering an alliance at the moment, effectively confirming rumors that the parties will be fielding separate and rival candidates and complicating the odds of the CHP retaining key municipalities.
Türkiye will hold municipal elections in March 2024.
