MHP Leader Bahçeli Dismisses Calls For Resignation After Election Defeat

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has dismissed calls for his resignation as the party chairman after the nationalist party faced a heavy defeat against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the snap election on Sunday.
“I put my head on the path of the Turkish nation. I would give my head but not take a step back,” Bahçeli said in a statement on Wednesday while commenting on growing calls on him to step down as the MHP leader.
Bahçeli’s MHP was the biggest loser in Sunday’s snap vote with the party having received only 40 seats in Parliament after winning 11.94 percent of the vote in the Nov. 1 election, losing 40 seats after winning 80 seats in the June general election and receiving around 16 percent of the vote.
After the election on Sunday, the MHP has begun questioning the factors that contributed to its heavy defeat by holding a series of meetings attended by the party's top officials.
Many commentators accuse Bahçeli of pursuing an inactive and non-constructive policy following the June 7 elections and failing to contribute to a possible coalition government.
“I would have been given a red-carpet treatment if I had turned a blind eye to ill-gotten gains or if I had told them to divide the country and annihilate Turkishness. I would like to remind that I never made concessions on what I believed,” Bahçeli said.
According to reports, opponent MHP delegates are planning to get the signatures of at least 249 out of 1,200 delegates to gather an early party congress according to its bylaws. Possible contenders against Bahçeli in an extraordinary congress may be party figures such as Meral Akşener, former Iğdır deputy Sinan Oğan, MHP founder Alparslan Turkeş's close friend and former party secretary Dr. Selim Kaptanoğlu and former MHP Eskişehir deputy Gün Sazak's son Süleyman Servet Sazak. The former head of the MHP's İzmir party branch, Müsavat Dervişoğlu, who also ran against Bahçeli at the 2012 MHP party congress, may also run for chairperson.
The MHP is expected to hold an ordinary congress in March 2016. However, the party might decide to postpone the congress until March 2017. In the previous ordinary congress held on March 21, Bahçeli was re-elected as chairman of the party after receiving votes from 1,149 of 1,160 party delegates. (Cihan/Today's Zaman)