09 April 2016•Update: 09 April 2016
ANKARA
A senior figure in Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on Saturday ruled out a party congress until all legal proceedings are finished amid grassroots pressure for a change in leadership.
Deputy Chairman Oktay Ozturk said there will be no extraordinary congress until a Supreme Court case is over. On Friday, a lower court in Ankara ruled the party must convene a congress after an application by members - a decision that was appealed by the party hierarchy.
Many MHP supporters were shocked by the party’s poor performance in November’s general election re-run, when it scraped across the 10 percent vote threshold to take 40 seats, making it the smallest party in parliament and falling behind the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Criticism focused on Chairman Devlet Bahceli, who has led the party since 1997 and who dissident members now want replaced.
Former MHP lawmakers have signaled they will run for the leadership. On Saturday, Umit Ozdag, an MHP deputy for Gaziantep in southern Turkey, declared his bid during a meeting in Rize province on the Black Sea.
“I will run for the office at the next party elections, to be able to realize what I have been saying,” he said. Ozdag resigned as one of the party’s deputy chairman on Feb. 24.
Meanwhile, Ozturk said the implementation of the Ankara Civil Court of Peace’s order “cannot be possible” until the Supreme Court case is completed. “The judicial process is not over yet,” he said in a statement.
In February, 543 MHP delegates sent a petition to party headquarters demanding an extraordinary congress. The petition, filed at an Ankara court on Feb. 5, criticized the MHP leadership for not calling an extraordinary general convention.
Bahceli rejected the push for an extraordinary congress and has said the next party congress will be held as scheduled in March 2018.
His opponents want to hold the meeting on Turkism Day, held every May 3 by Turkish nationalists since 1944. However, even if they succeed party regulations ban the election of a new leader at an extraordinary congress.
“We will not turn over the MHP to those who want to turn it into this,” Bahceli said. “So, we will use judicial means and keep going until the end. They have used judicial means and now we’re starting to use judicial means.”
