MHP may lose votes in snap elections, survey center head says

Ankara-based Objective Research Center (ORC) head Mehmet Murat Pösteki said the MHP does not give enough importance to the survey methods that take the pulse of the nation and they might fall behind understanding what the nation wants of them. "That is why they cannot see their mistakes, what the MHP grassroots expects of them. It will harm their support" Pösteki said.

Pösteki added that he was against every option, which caused negativity over the voters who are close to the MHP. "It is highly possible to see the same scenario as in 2002," Pösteki added, noting a decrease in MHP votes ahead of early elections. He said that both the MHP and HDP might see decreases in their votes while the AK Party and Republican People's Party (CHP) might experience an increase.

Pösteki added that it is too early to say if the MHP will be the fourth party in Parliament.

After the June 7 elections an AK Party-MHP coalition was considered the most probable option due to the closeness of the parties' voters' views, but MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli's harsh statements raised doubts about a coalition. In previous statements, Bahçeli gave the three stipulations for forming a coalition as terminating the Kurdish reconciliation process, limiting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's powers to those set in the Constitution and restarting the investigation into the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25 corruption probes. The party has since reiterated its position that it wants to stay out of a coalition government. Analysts had, in fact, for long seen the MHP as the most likely coalition partner for the AK Party in the new Parliament, but following last week's meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Bahçeli again repeated his opinion of not being a part of a coalition government. Bahçeli indicated that the public has given the MHP the position of being the main opposition rather than forming a coalition.

In the June 7 elections, the AK Party received the most votes at 40.87 percent. The CHP received the second-most at 24.95 percent followed by the MHP with 16.29 percent and the HDP with 13.12 percent. The deputy distribution of the 550 seats in Parliament has not changed – the AK Party has 258 seats followed by the CHP with 132 and then the MHP and HDP with 80 seats each.