Turkey: MHP to 'evaluate' election results

ANKARA

Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli will gather his leadership Wednesday to “evaluate” the results of Turkey’s general election.

The meeting will come amid fevered speculation about a possible coalition government in Turkey.

The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu came first in the election, securing the largest number of votes -- 41 percent -- to claim 258 seats in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, 18 short of a simple majority.

The MHP won 80 seats in Sunday’s election, placing them joint third with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

Bahceli had earlier ruled out being part of a coalition.

Delivering a message from MHP headquarters after the election, Bahceli said: "The MHP is ready to be a main opposition party in a possible AK Party-CHP-HDP coalition."

"Nobody has a right to drag Turkey into [AK Party] minority and some circles' scenarios," said Bahceli. "A snap election will happen whenever it will happen," he added.

Bahceli said: "The president should tend towards the chairman of the party with the highest votes to kick-start the formation of a government, which is Ahmet Davutoglu of the AK Party.

"It is wrong to force the country into fait accomplis such as 'this party should make a coalition government with that party' before Davutoglu starts to work on it," Bahceli said.

The MHP leader said a possible coalition should be one that has a chance of creating "harmony".

"The AK Party has been seeking this harmony with the solution process and maintained it since the Oslo talks," Bahceli said, referring to the series of meetings known as the 'Oslo talks' in the Norwegian capital between 2009 and 2011, which were aimed to settle the decades-long armed conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a militant group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.

"One part of this solution process is now in the Turkish parliament with 79 delegates. That means the first coalition should be between the AK Party and the HDP," Bahceli said.

The nationalist MHP pledged before the elections to secure better conditions for public sector workers and pensioners as well as to fight corruption and lift parliamentary immunity.

The party has also said it would reverse the ‘solution process’ initiated by the AK Party to end the Kurdish conflict; the MHP promised to take a tough stance on terrorism and “defeat” Kurdish separatists.

Bahceli also said his party added two-thirds more deputies compared to the 2011 parliamentary election, in which the MHP only secured 13 percent of the vote and 53 seats.