Good Party likely to get new chair after election loss
Once the third biggest party of Türkiye, the opposition İP eroded in successive elections, and its chair announced an extraordinary election for her potential successor yesterday
Akşener, head of the Good Party (İP), announced yesterday that her party would hold an extraordinary election to elect a new chair. Her statement at a news conference at party headquarters in the capital of Ankara came after İP’s weak showing in Sunday’s municipal elections. The party won only one mayoral seat out of 81 provinces, along with several smaller constituencies.
Unofficial results show İP won around 3.7% of the vote across Türkiye, right behind the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Akşener was once a member of, along with founding cadres of İP. İP was only a few points ahead of Victory Party (ZP), another party founded by former MHP members.
Akşener’s decision echoes the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) tumultuous post-election period after its leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu lost to incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the presidential election. CHP held an extraordinary intraparty election last November, something that cost Kılıçdaroğlu his seat. Like Kılıçdaroğlu, who she once endorsed, Akşener’s political fate hangs in balance after the election results. She was already under fire by her dissidents within the party for her insistence on fielding the party’s own candidates instead of supporting stronger contenders from other parties, namely, CHP. Within hours of unofficial results, Bilge Yılmaz, who heads the party’s economic affairs department, stepped down from his post and urged party Chair Meral Akşener to resign in the face of losses. Later, İrem Yaman, a taekwondo champion
who was serving in the party’s general administrative committee, announced her resignation from her post.
As she spoke at the news conference flanked by the party’s top names, Akşener was defiant despite the defeat. She hailed the overall election result due to losses the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) suffered. “You can argue about anything in democracies except the vote, the nation’s will. The nation’s will is reflected in our win in 31 constituencies,” she said. “No politician can ignore the low turnout in the election,” she said, pointing out what she called “fatigue” among voters. “We will
conduct self-critique about the election results,” Akşener said.
It is unclear whether she will run in the election. Before last year’s election, she notoriously backtracked from endorsing Kılıçdaroğlu, candidate of a six-party alliance against Erdoğan. Yet, she changed her mind upon pressure and returned to the opposition bloc.
The İP has been grappling with back-toback scandals, including accusations of corruption and infighting, since the six-party opposition bloc lost to the People’s Alliance in presidential and parliamentary elections. The chaos worsened after Akşener pulled her party out of the alliance, blaming the CHP for poor showing in legislative polls, and officially rejected CHP’s offer to team up again for the mayoral vote.
Akşener and her close circle’s insistence on competing alone has been pushing deputies, including founding members, away in droves, who believe the İP had very little chance to haul in any significant constituencies by itself and instead endorse CHP’s Istanbul and Ankara Mayors Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, two former favorites of Akşener. The pair had won Türkiye’s two largest cities in 2019 polls with support from İP and the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (Dem Party), and previously going by the names of HEDEP and HDP. Resignations reduced the party’s seats in the parliament from 44 to 38. In a move that could quicken resignations going ahead, Akşener has accused Yavaş, along with İmamoğlu, of “cowardice” for refusing her open call earlier this year to run for president instead of Kılıçdaroğlu.
İP executives have warned the party could lose over 5,000 members in the coming period should the trend of dissent continue.