 Party elected 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, as the party’s new chairperson at Saturday’s extraordinary party congress.){kind=link}
Turkey’s nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party elected 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, as the party’s new chairperson at Saturday’s extraordinary party congress.
The congress was called to replace İYİ Party leader Meral Akşener, who has been at the helm of the party since its founding in 2017, after the party sustained a defeat in the recent local elections. İYİ won only 3.7 percent of the nationwide vote, comprising only one provincial municipality, 23 districts and seven town municipalities.
The İYİ Party had been a member of an opposition election alliance called the Table of Six and received 9.9 percent of the nationwide vote and 44 seats in parliament in the May 2023 general election.
The party left the alliance following the May election, when the opposition bloc candidate, former main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, was defeated.
Dervişoğlu, known as Akşener’s right-hand man, was elected on Saturday among four candidates running for the position, including lawmaker Koray Aydın. When none of the candidates managed to receive the absolute majority in the first and second rounds of the voting, Dervişoğlu, who received 611 votes, was elected in the third round, while his closest rival, Aydın, received 548 votes.
The first congratulations to Dervişoğlu came from Akşener on social media. President and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also congratulated the new İYİ Party leader by phone.
The 64-year-old Dervişoğlu is known to have joined nationalist youth group the Grey Wolves (Ülkü Ocakları), seen as the paramilitary wing of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), during his university years.
Serving as president of the Grey Wolves between 1987 and 1989, Dervişoğlu was later assigned to the MHP’s provincial organization in İzmir.
According to a report submitted to parliament in the 1990s by then-head of the Prime Ministry Supervisory Board Kutlu Savaş, Dervişoğlu had been receiving orders from Mehmet Eymür, a retired executive who used to work in the National Intelligence Organization’s (MİT) counterterrorism department.
Eymür confessed in an interview in 2021 that he and other officers from the organization had used various methods of torture during interrogations as part of operations from the 1970s to the 1990s.
After serving as the MHP’s provincial chairperson in İzmir from 2000 to 2011, Dervişoğlu resigned from the party in 2017 and subsequently joined the İYİ Party.
He was deputy chairman of the party between 2018 and 2019. He also served as a lawmaker from İzmir and deputy group chairman of the party.