Freshly recovering from a public dispute that finally saw them settle on a presidential candidate for the upcoming elections, Türkiye’s six-party opposition alliance is now facing yet another dispute in the form of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP): a party facing a potential ban for its ties to the PKK terrorist group.
A day after the alliance put aside differences and internal strife to endorse candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), the bloc’s second-largest and nationalist Good Party (IP) on Tuesday shut down any possibility of embracing the HDP.
“The CHP can have talks with the HDP. Everyone should respect the relations between other political parties but the HDP can never join the alliance or be given a ministry if we win,” IP Chair Meral Akşener told private broadcaster Habertürk on Tuesday evening.
Akşener herself has been in the spotlight over the past week for her abrupt split from the alliance over her unwillingness to nominate Kılıçdaroğlu as candidate due to her favoring of CHP’s popular Ankara and Istanbul mayors Mansur Yavaş and Ekrem Imamoğlu. She backtracked on Monday when her proposal to have the mayors as Kılıçdaroğlu’s vice presidents instead was accepted and the bloc, officially dubbed the National Alliance, reunited to rally behind the CHP leader.
Akşener governs a nationalist party that analysts say would shun open support for the HDP and she personally dismissed any collaboration with it.
The HDP, despite being the third-largest in Parliament, has so far been excluded from the six-party coalition for the same reason. It has previously floated the idea of fielding its own candidate in the absence of talks but a co-chair of the HDP, Mithat Sancar, said the party was reconsidering that after last month’s earthquakes that claimed over 46,000 lives in Türkiye’s southeast.
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