The Good Party (IP), one of the key members of the six-party opposition bloc, suffers from apparent internal strife with resignations since the May 28 runoff. Ahat Andican, a former state minister who was among the founders of the party, announced his resignation on Monday. He is the second former lawmaker to quit the party after Aytun Çıray, a chief adviser to the party’s chair Meral Akşener, who tendered his resignation after incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defeated the opposition bloc’s candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
In a tweet on Monday, Andican said he no longer had the opportunity to work compatibly with the IP administration politically “at this point.” “I am now joining the opposition members without a party,” he tweeted.
His resignation came less than two weeks before a convention of the party which will elect a new chair or vote for Akşener again. Prior to the May 14 elections, Yavuz Ağıralioğlu, a prominent lawmaker, announced his resignation from the party, citing its support to the opposition bloc endorsed by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a party linked to the terrorist group PKK. IP portrays itself as a nationalist party but has long been criticized for tolerating the HDP’s support for the opposition bloc’s candidate.
Akşener had opposed the nomination of Kılıçdaroğlu at first and in a rare public outburst announced before the May 14 elections that she did not support him and made her proposal for nomination of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu or Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş instead. Yet, she returned to the bloc she suddenly quit a few days later, endorsing Kılıçdaroğlu, to the chagrin of dissidents within her party. Aytun Çıray, a former lawmaker for IP from Republican People’s Party (CHP) stronghold Izmir, cited in his resignation letter that Akşener had “a crisis of confidence” with the Turkish public.
Dissidents of Akşener are expected to form a new political movement while they repeatedly called her to step down after the defeat of Kılıçdaroğlu she feverishly supported. The CHP itself faces criticism among its supporters, urging the resignation of Kılıçdaroğlu.
Alongside the secular CHP, the nationalist IP was the second-largest in an alliance of six opposition parties that first joined forces against Erdoğan in the run-up to the 2018 elections. While their Nation Alliance won 35% of the parliamentary vote on May 14 for all five parties that ran under the CHP’s banner, which managed to clinch 169 seats with 25.3%, the IP itself received a disappointing 9.6% support amounting to 43 lawmakers, totaling 212 for the bloc.
The bloc failed to gain a majority in the 600-member Parliament against the People's Alliance, helmed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and two other smaller parties, which walked away with 49.5% support translating to a total of 323 lawmakers. Erdoğan’s AK Party secured 35.6% – some 268 lawmakers – enjoying countrywide support, even from provinces like Kahramanmaraş and Şanlıurfa that were devastated by two catastrophic earthquakes earlier in February.
