HDP open to coalition with unwilling AKP: co-chair

Cansu Çamlıbel - ANKARA

DHA Photo

Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ has said her party has not closed the door on coalition talks with the Justice and Development Party (AKP), but that the AKP does not want to form a coalition with the HDP.

“We are ready to do whatever it takes in case we are supposed to take part in any coalition formation,” Yüksekdağ told daily Hürriyet on July 12. “But the reality is the AKP does not [want to] take part in a coalition with the HDP.”

Yüksekdağ said the AKP has thus far sent the HDP negative messages on a potential coalition involving the two parties and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is also the head of the AKP, had signaled the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) were the only alternatives for a coalition partner.

“It was [Davutoğlu] who expressed a coalition with the HDP appears a distant prospect,” she said.

Yüksekdağ said her party, from the beginning, has been open to discussion within the context of a coalition and that it was ready to discuss again any subject. “We never closed our doors [to a coalition]. We endorsed a responsible and prudent attitude to help create a convenient coalition option. But it is hard to say the same thing for the ruling party [AKP],” she added.

Yüksekdağ’s remarks came as Davutoğlu was on the verge of beginning coalition talks with the leaders of the political parties that secured seats in parliament by passing the 10 percent threshold in the June 7 parliamentary election.

Davutoğlu’s first round of coalition talks is set to begin on July 13, as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on July 9 commissioned the AKP leader and the incumbent prime minister to form a new government more than a month after the AKP lost its parliamentary majority.