The president of Turkey’s IYI party, the former speaker of the Turkish parliament Meral Akşener, announced the convening of an extraordinary party congress after the serious debacle suffered by the nationalist political formation in the last local elections in Turkey, where the party founded by Akşener herself as an excision of the National Movement Party (MHP) lost half of the votes, going from 7.3% of support nationally to only 3.77% last Sunday, being relegated to 6th place.
In a media appearance yesterday, Akşener announced the convening of an extraordinary congress to analyse the results and the consequences of the latest elections, although she tried to divert attention by stressing that after Sunday Turkish people have shown that they are “tired of being squeezed between two fists”, in reference to Erdoğan’s AKP party and its main rival, the CHP, which has been the big winner of these elections. The İYİ only managed to win the mayoralty of Nevşehir, a city in the Cappadocia region.
Akşener attributed the CHP’s success to the economic problems faced by citizens under the AKP government, especially the soaring inflation, which does not seem to be abating and has reached almost 70%, and called on the Turkish president and AKP leader to learn from what happened. “I trust that he now realises that he must be the president of all of Turkey,” he said.
The fact is that both the İYİ party and Akşener herself came into these elections in Turkey very weakened, especially after Akşener decided not to repeat the electoral coalition with the CHP and to run the polls alone: this decision unleashed an unstoppable cascade of resignations within the party, many of them key figures, and also including the expulsion of several members openly dissatisfied with the management of Akşener, whom the most critical accuse of lacking internal democracy and of leading the party in an aimless direction. Hours before the announcement of the extraordinary congress, several media outlets in Turkey even spoke of Akşener’s own possible resignation following the IYI party’s debacle in the elections.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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