BBP candidates withdraw in favor of MHP

ISTANBUL

Mustafa Şahin, running as a mayoral candidate in Adana from the ultra-nationalist Great Union Party (BBP), and Yasin Türkoğlu, an independent candidate running for the same post, announced on March 24 that they had withdrawn in order to lend support to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Along with BBP’s Şahin, the same party’s candidates for Seyhan and Pozantı towns; BBP’s Yüreğir town branch chief; Adana Provincial Chief of the Alperen Ocakları, the youth group of the BBP; BBP’s Provincial Youth Branch Chief; and BBP’s Provincial Women Branch Chief also joined the MHP at a ceremony that was held at election office of MHP’s mayoral candidate Hüseyin Sözlü.

“We are withdrawing in favor of MHP. Inshallah [God willing], this process ends for the good of our country,” Şahin said as he was decorated with an MHP pin by Sözlü.

Türkoğlu, who also attended the ceremony, and is known to be close to a movement backed by U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, called on his supporters to vote for the MHP.