 Party lawmaker has resigned from the party, which has seen a growing exodus of members since last year, mainly due to internal fractures and challenges in the aftermath of its election defeat in May 2023, the Medyascope news website reported on Friday.){kind=link}
Another nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party lawmaker has resigned from the party, which has seen a growing exodus of members since last year, mainly due to internal fractures and challenges in the aftermath of its election defeat in May 2023, the Medyascope news website reported on Friday.
Antalya MP Aykut Kaya announced his resignation in a statement on his X account on Friday, saying that “the conditions to serve my nation and country within the party have disappeared.”
Kamuoyuna saygılarımla… pic.twitter.com/TPYBmIEqIR
— Aykut Kaya (@AykutKaya07) May 31, 2024
Medyascope also reported rumors that Kaya will join the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) before its group meeting on June 4, with CHP leader Özgür Özel pinning the party badge on him.
İYİ Party General Administrative Board member Bahadır Erdem, who resigned from the party on November 10, joined the CHP ranks earlier this month.
İYİ had previously broken away from the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an election ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The İYİ Party’s former leader, Meral Akşener, who was a member of the MHP for years, parted ways with it due to disagreements and established her own party in October 2017.
The party set up an alliance with the CHP before the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2018, which also continued for the 2023 elections. The party, which received 9.9 percent of the nationwide vote and 44 seats in parliament in the general election, left the alliance after the opposition bloc candidate, former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, was defeated by Erdoğan in the presidential election.
Akşener refused to ally with the CHP for this year’s March 31 local elections. Her party instead nominated its own candidates in all provinces.
The repercussions of the party’s move to run independently have been significant, with a succession of resignations and dismissals among lawmakers and prominent figures within the party and growing calls for Akşener’s resignation.
She was replaced in April by Müsavat Dervişoğlu, the party’s deputy group chairman and a controversial figure with alleged ties to a former intelligence chief known to have resorted to torture during interrogations.