Former CHP dissident Tarhan forms a new party

Okan Konuralp ANKARA

Emine Ülker Tarhan filed an application to the Interior Ministry to officially found the “Anadolu Party” on Nov. 14. AA Photo

Following her resignation from Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Emine Ülker Tarhan has founded a new political party.

The move comes two weeks after resigning from the CHP after severely criticizing the party's policies, which she claimed were “detached” from the people and not conducive to it coming to power.

Tarhan, along with retired Rear Admiral Türker Ertürk and the former mayor of Istanbul’s Maltepe district, Mustafa Zengin, filed an application to the Interior Ministry to officially found the “Anadolu Party" (Anatolia Party) on Nov. 14.

The Anadolu Party will have an emblem composed of figures of the sun and a sun-flower. The sun is said to symbolize “Anatolia and hope” and the sun-flower figure is said to symbolize the Thrace region, in an apparent bid to reflect the party’s prizing of geographical unity.

Upon resigning from her former party on Oct. 31, Tarhan said: “I’m resigning from the CHP, which I had joined with great hopes, in order not to be a part of incorrect and weak policies that have neither hope for power nor the target for power.”

Tarhan was suggested by many in the CHP’s neo-nationalist wing to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate in its August elections.

Following the Aug. 10 presidential election, a group of disgruntled lawmakers, including Tarhan, openly called on CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to resign and take the party to a convention to elect a new leader. In particular, they harshly criticized the appointment of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as a joint presidential candidate with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). İhsanoğlu, a former secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), only received around 38 percent of the vote in the election, less than the sum of the votes the two parties received in the local election earlier this year.