ANKARA
A leading figure of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has said the party is open to coalition talks if negotiations between the Justice and Development (AK) Party and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) to form a government are unsuccessful.
In comments made to the Anadolu Agency Friday, the senior MHP official said that the coalition talks between MHP and AK Party could begin if some of their conditions were met, including the end of the “solution process” that aims to resolve the decades-long conflict between Turkey and Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is listed by Ankara as a terrorist group. Another condition was the re-opening of graft cases that targeted some high-ranking officials in 2013.
The right way for AK Party and CHP would be to make sacrifices and form a government among themselves, he added.
Stating that Turkey could not tolerate instability; the official said: “AK Party should not avoid responsibility”, adding: “Turkey needs normalization.”
The MHP representative also said that they were not in favor of snap elections, but if that was the only solution, then it should not be avoided.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to form a new government on July 9.
Davutoglu now has less than a month left to form a government around his AK Party, which gained the largest share of parliamentary seats (258) in the June 7 general election.
Although the party came in first, it did not win enough seats to form a majority government, so it must attempt to forge a coalition with one of three other parliamentary parties -- the second place CHP (132 seats), the MHP (80 seats) or the pro-Kurdish HDP (80 seats).
If no coalition appears within this period, the country will have to hold an early election, most likely in the second half of November.
