MHP not afraid of snap polls, Bahçeli says

ANKARA

DHA photo

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is not afraid of snap polls, its leader Devlet Bahçeli has said, as he commented on a recent rivalry inside his party.

“The MHP is not afraid of the [10 percent election] threshold or anything and will not be. The MHP can’t be directed with rumors produced in columns, on TV screens and on social and Internet media,” Bahçeli said, in the parliamentary group meeting of his party on May 10. 

Former MHP lawmaker Meral Akşener, who has already expressed her intention to run for the party leadership, recently said that the votes of the MHP would rise to 25 percent if she was elected the leader of the party. 

“They say that the developments on the extraordinary party congress will be determinant. They say that if the MHP stays with the current administration, it won’t be able to pass the threshold and if it goes it will rise to 25 percent. This choir of miserable [individuals] and liars attempted to plant their deception mechanisms like homemade bombs,” Bahçeli said, referring to the extraordinary party congress that an Ankara court ruled on, as it also appointed a three-member panel to organize it, accepting the demands of the dissident MHP members. Another court decided to halt the extraordinary party congress process as a precaution.

Meanwhile, the lawyer of another former MHP lawmaker who expressed his intention to run for party leadership said the extraordinary congress will be held and the court’s decision to halt the process was void.

Former lawmaker Sinan Oğan’s lawyer, Kürşat Ergün, said the decision was void, as the ruling wasn’t conveyed to them during the legal time period. 

MHP dissidents have criticized Bahçeli since the MHP’s poor showing in the Nov. 1, 2015, election, in which it only won 11 percent of the country’s votes and 40 seats in parliament.

Bahçeli has led the party since July 1997, but MHP dissidents have collected enough delegate votes to hold an extraordinary convention to challenge the party’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Bahçeli also renewed his support of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the fight against terrorism, saying they accepted it as a “national duty.”

“If the struggle against terrorism decelerates after the extraordinary congress of the AKP, we won’t hesitate to give additional support as a party in parliament,” Bahçeli said, referring to the AKP’s congress on May 22, after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced his decision to leave the chairmanship of the party.