A tough task awaits Müsavat Dervişoğlu, a stalwart figure of Türkiye’s nationalist circles. The 64-year-old businessperson formally took office at the opposition Good Party (IP) on Wednesday, after his election last week. The IP, the fifth-largest party in the Turkish Parliament, bid farewell to founding Chair Meral Akşener, who stepped down for an intraparty election after the party’s underwhelming performance at the March 31 municipal elections.
Akşener showed up at the doorstep of IP offices in the capital, Ankara, to welcome Dervişoğlu, a former member of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) like herself. A brief handover ceremony was held in a warm atmosphere at the party, with the successor and predecessor uttering kind words to each other.
In the immediate aftermath of his election, Dervişoğlu, who beat two other candidates at the IP election, has stated that he took office in a critical period and had a “historic responsibility” but signaled that the party would not change much in its stance in Turkish politics. The party was already shaken by a string of resignations after Akşener’s decision to field the party’s own candidates in municipal elections instead of alliance with stronger parties. After Dervişoğlu’s election, more resignations followed, including the mayor of a town in the northern province of Trabzon while the party’s acting parliamentary group chair Erhan Usta, a supporter of Dervişoğlu’s rival Koray Aydın, stepped down from his post.
Akşener is the second party chair to lose her seat after the 2023 presidential elections won by incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In November, the head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, lost his seat to Özgür Özel in an intra-party election. Supporters of both parties were critical of their leaders for election losses against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
The IP thrived on the votes of former supporters of the MHP who were disillusioned with the latter’s alliance with the AK Party. Another group split from the MHP founded the far-right Victory Party (ZP), but it fared worse than the IP in municipal elections. The IP won only one provincial mayor seat in the March 31 elections.
The party aspires to regain the trust of supporters disappointed with defeat in local elections. Yet the results showed that the only path to success is through an alliance with other parties, which will be figured out in the next general elections in 2028. Dervişoğlu will have to tread carefully through murky alliances, unlike Akşener, who notoriously left the six-party alliance briefly when her candidates for the presidency were not accepted ahead of the general elections last year. He can only count on the votes of former nationalists who supported the CHP in a bid to oust Erdoğan in the past. However, under new management, the CHP seems to be also earning the favor of non-CHP voters, as municipal election results showed.
