Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies Gaye Usluer and Yaşar Tüzün announced on Tuesday on Twitter that the necessary number of signatures for a petition to call an emergency convention had been collected.
“We will continue to collect signatures until next Monday. Those who want to check the petition can come and see,” Usluer tweeted, with Tüzün also posting same message.
In order to hold an emergency convention to elect a chairman, 627 signatures, a simple majority of delegates, must be presented.
According to the T24 news website, however, some CHP deputies close to the executive board stated that the intra-party opposition could not collect all the signatures needed, yet Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu would declare an emergency convention to show he has the upper hand.
After the presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24, CHP deputies urged the party’s executive board for a change in top management, since presidential candidate Muharrem İnce outperformed the party by garnering some 8 percent more votes.
Some party members explicitly stated that İnce has become the “natural leader” of the party; however the CHP’s top management, including Kılıçdaroğlu, repeatedly rejected the need for an emergency convention.
As evidence of his ambition for the chairmanship, İnce today posted a tweetstorm about recent political and economic developments in Turkey at the same time Kılıçdaroğlu was giving his weekly speech at the party’s parliament group meeting.