The resignation of prominent figures one after another shook the Good Party (IP) of the Turkish opposition as the party chair rejected alliances with other parties despite mounting calls.
Nebi Hatipoğlu, a lawmaker, was among the first to leave the party and join the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Over the past week, Durmuş Yılmaz, a former central bank governor and one of the founders of the party, quietly announced his resignation on social media. Hours after him, Bahadır Erdem, a popular figure in the party who was on the party’s administrative board announced his split. Media reports say more resignations are expected in the coming days as two more lawmakers disagree with party Chair Meral Akşener.
Erdem openly named Akşener’s decision not to form an alliance with other opposition parties for the upcoming municipal elections, as one of the reasons for his resignation. Yılmaz, quoted by the media, simply said the party “collapsed.”
IP, an initially reluctant member of the six-party opposition bloc due to the nomination of main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as presidential candidate in May’s elections, suffered from a blow when Kılıçdaroğlu lost to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The defeat also cost Kılıçdaroğlu his seat in the CHP after this month’s chairpersonship election in the CHP. Akşener, however, was reelected as head of IP in a recent election.
Opposition parties view a new alliance as the only way to cling to municipal seats as the AK Party’s general election victory may spell another defeat for the opposition in the local vote scheduled for March.
IP lost prominent names since the decision to endorse Kılıçdaroğlu in the general election and after the defeat to AK Party, from Yavuz Ağıralioğlu, who is now rumored to be planning to establish his own party after municipal elections, to lawmakers Aytun Çıray and Ahat Andican. Dozens also resigned from local branches of IP.
Müsavat Dervişoğlu, the party’s deputy group chair in Parliament, recently defended their decision to field their own candidates in municipal elections by saying that they wanted to “test” themselves, to see whether people can choose “a third way” instead of the AK Party or the main opposition CHP. “We have never been a party that would act as an instrument for a victory of any political party,” Dervişoğlu told reporters last week, months after Akşener stormed off the six-party bloc, before returning to it a few days later, accepting Kılıçdaroğlu’s nomination.
