Bahçeli renews his call on İYİ Party leader Akşener to return to MHP

ANKARA

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has renewed his call on İYİ (Good) Party chair Meral Akşener to break with the opposition Nation’s Alliance and return to her “home,” meaning the MHP.

“There is still time, our suggestion is still valid. Return home, this ordeal will end,” Bahçeli said during the MHP’S provincial heads meeting on Dec. 24.

The presidential government system is the “only guarantee of national unity and brotherhood, the stability and balance of the state,” he said.

In response, Akşener shared a photo of her on a social media account of her inside her official car with the caption, mockingly saying: “We finished our work at the headquarters, I am returning home.”

On Aug. 4., Bahçeli asked Akşener to return to her “home party,” the MHP. By Akşener visiting the Hagia Sophia Mosque and praying there, the İYİ Party leader dissociated herself from the other members of the opposition Nation’s Alliance, Bahçeli had said.

Other partners in the Nation’s Alliance, including the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) – which is informally part of the alliance – rejected the change in the status of the Hagia Sophia, Bahçeli said.

The CHP and İYİ Party’s Nation’s Alliance supported each other’s candidates in the 2019 local election, scoring major successes in Turkey’s biggest cities. Before that, the parties had also formed an alliance for the June 24, 2018, presidential and parliamentary elections.

After unsuccessfully challenging Bahçeli for the MHP’s leadership, Akşener quit the party in 2016 and announced the establishment of the İYİ Party on Oct. 25, 2017, after which she became party leader.

The MHP entered the June 24 elections as part of the People’s Alliance with the AKP.