ANKARA
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has accused other opposition parties of making moves solely for electoral purposes.
“It turns out that other opposition parties are making calculations for the next general election, which prevent them from imagining a coalition without AK Party [the ruling Justice and Development Party],” Kilicdaroglu said in a press release on Sunday.
“Parties other than CHP unfortunately are commenting on which parties they cannot form a coalition with. For us, the criteria [for forming a coalition] are our principles and our campaign pledges,” he added.
Kilicdaroglu’s comments come after Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Nationalist Movement Party, criticized the CHP leader’s offer to make him prime minister in a possible MHP-CHP coalition government.
Bahceli said on his Twitter account Saturday that Kilicdaroglu was offering a seat that he did not have, adding that the CHP leader was overwhelmed by his ambitions.
He also told a local newspaper on Saturday that Turkey could hold an early general election on November 15, should no government be formed.
According to the official results of the June 7 general election, the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party has 258 MPs elected to the Turkish parliament.
The CHP has 132 seats, followed by the MHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) each with 80.
In order to form a government, any coalition needs to have 276 MPs' support - a simple majority in a 550-seated parliament. Since a coalition MHP – CHP would be 64 seats shy of a simple majority and would therefore need the HDP to take a part in that coalition.
However, Bahceli said on various occasions that the MHP would not take part in a coalition with the HDP.
The nationalist party considers the HDP as a political wing of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been involved in a decades-long conflict with the Turkish government, and which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU and Turkey.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to ask the AK Party to form a government after the election of a new parliament speaker around the end of June.
Turkey's constitution stipulates that a new government must be formed within 45 days following the president's demand.
If no government is formed, the country will have to hold early parliamentary elections.
