İYİ Party refuses election alliance with CHP

ANKARA

The İYİ (Good) Party has turned down the main opposition party’s calls to forming an alliance for the municipal elections to be held in March 2024.

“As a result of the vote at our general executive board, the İYİ Party will run free and individually in the 2024 local elections,” the party spokesman Kürşad Zorlu told reporters late on Dec. 4. Some 35 members of the board voted in favor of running individually while 14 members underlined the need for election alliance, according to the İYİ Party officials.

In a meeting with İYİ Party leader Meral Akşener last week, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Özgür Özel proposed cooperation between the two parties in the upcoming local polls to be held on March 31, 2024.

The CHP and İYİ Party had formed an alliance for the 2019 local elections which resulted in a big victory for their joint candidates, Ekrem İmamoğlu in Istanbul and Mansur Yavaş in Ankara. Their partnership also brought other metropolitan municipalities including Antalya and Adana.

But the defeat of the six-party oppositional alliance at the parliamentary and presidential elections in the May polls has changed the İYİ Party’s approach.

“The local elections will be a starting point of the İYİ Party’s march to the government,” Zorlu added, stressing that the party will continue to voice its opposition against the current government.

The Supreme Election Council (YSK) has announced that the election calendar will start on Jan. 1, 2024. The parties will announce their candidates after the New Year.