CHP slams MHP for siding with ruling party in support for Erdoğan

ANKARA

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) spokesperson Bülent Tezcan has slammed the Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) alliance with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to support the presidential candidacy of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“There may be some alliances in politics. But there should not be adhesions. The MHP’s base does not deserve having its will grafted onto another party. The MHP is a serious party and has had a serious role in Turkey’s history,” Tezcan said on Jan. 10 after the CHP’s Central Executive Board meeting in Ankara.

His comments came after MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli endorsed Erdoğan for the presidential elections due to be held in 2019, announcing that the nationalist party will not present its own candidate.

The AKP and the MHP were in an alliance in the process of preparing and campaigning for the referendum on shifting Turkey to an executive presidential system.

Blasting the MHP’s support for the AKP and Erdoğan, Tezcan described Bahçeli’s party as the “junior ruling party.”

“Whenever we criticize Erdoğan, the answer comes from Bahçeli,” he said.

Recalling that Bahçeli had been critical of the AKP rule before the alliance, Tezcan suggested that the shift in its discourse “will make the MHP’s base question its party.”

The CHP spokesman also slammed the binary opposition presented by the AKP and the MHP, in which Erdoğan’s supporters are presented as “national” and his opponents as “terrorists” and sympathizers of the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ).

“Whoever accepts this [binary] are linking their entire political existence to Erdoğan and the palace,” Tezcan said.

“But we will never hand over the voter’s will to Erdoğan and the AKP,” he added.