The Republican People’s Party (CHP) executive board on Friday announced that an intra-party opposition group could not manage to collect enough delegate signatures in a petition to force the party to hold an emergency convention, the Cumhuriyet daily reported.
The opposition group said they submitted a petition with 630 signatures, five more than the necessary number, as the CHP has 1,240 delegates across Turkey.
The CHP board, however, stated they had had received only 622 documents indicating delegate participation, while four of them were not notarized and four were “fake.”
Among the remaining 614, four were duplications and five belonged to delegates who were not authorized to demand an emergency convention, according to the board statement.
Taking into account withdrawals from the petition, the board foresaw a number of between 530 to 550 delegate signatures on the petition considered to be authentic.
Gaye Usluer, the spokesperson for the opposition group, said on Friday it would have made no difference if they had collected 830 signatures since the board had no intention of holding a convention.
“Although the number of signatures is not enough, why are you afraid of an emergency convention?” Usluer tweeted.
After presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24, the party’s presidential candidate Muharrem İnce launched a campaign to become chairman since he garnered 8 percent more votes than the CHP received in the general election.