Opposition’s Electoral Alliance Is Over, Nationalist Party Says

The “Nation Alliance” forged by four opposition parties to skirt the election threshold in order to enter Parliament is no longer in place, the spokesperson for the Nationalist Good (IYI) Party said on Wednesday.

Aytun Ciray, the spokesman for Good Party, told media that the alliance was an electoral one, and was very limited in time and scope.

“Our cooperation is not a coalition, but a cooperation for the election. We found an electoral alliance, a cooperation against election fraud and to avoid waste of our votes,” Ciray said, speaking to reporters before the party meeting in Ankara.

“With the end of elections, there is no need for election cooperation or alliance at the moment.”

His remarks elicited a response from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main driver of the alliance.

“The Nation Alliance in this context would have ended as an alliance in the election period but I think the will of the unity for the alliance at this point would continue,” CHP spokesperson Bulent Tezcan said.

The nationalist politician’s remarks came as a surprise. On Wednesday, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) head Sadi Guven announced official results.

President Erdogan will officially begin his second term as president, and first term in the new executive presidential system, on July 8.

The office of prime minister will be consigned to the dustbin of history.

CHP Descends into Intraparty Squabble

The main opposition party found itself in the midst of chaos as relations between CHP presidential candidate Muharrem Ince and Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu have strained.

On Tuesday, Kilicdaroglu slammed Ince for leaking the details of their private meeting to media amid wild rumors of calls for a party congress to elect a new leader.

Many people within the party want Ince who outperformed during the presidential election campaign and reinvigorated CHP base with his social outreach as the new CHP chairman.

In media reports on Tuesday, Ince urged Kilicdaroglu to hold a new party congress.

CHP leader dismissed the idea, while CHP spokesperson Tezcan refuted claims of divisions within the party.

“People I spoke to in Edremit district of Balikesir were mostly CHP voters, and despite his loss, Ince was still treated as the new leader of the CHP,” Gulay Icoz of King’s College London who observed elections in western Turkey told Globe Post Turkey. 

“In other words, Kilicdaroglu’s time is up among his former supporters. I expect that this will be a natural and smooth power handover from Kilicdaroglu to Ince, thus I expect Kilicdaroglu to resign any time soon,” she said several days after the election. 

Despite Icoz’s optimism, current signals suggest a potential showdown within CHP over its future direction.

In February this year, Kilicdaroglu was re-elected as CHP chairman in a bitter contest against Ince, the later presidential candidate. While both figures buried their past rivalry during the presidential campaign, signs of mutual acrimony have resurfaced again.

Separately, Icoz harbors skepticism about the endurance of alliance between ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

“The urging question is whether the coalition of the AKP and the MHP will last and whether they will agree on the resolution of the Kurdish question, Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU and the future direction of Turkey’s unstable economy,” she concluded.