MALATYA, Turkey
The Republican People's Party (CHP) will agree to a post-election calculus only if its party Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu is made the prime minister, the party's deputy chairman has said.
"We will only take part in a solution where our party is the governing power and our party chairman is the prime minister," Veli Agbaba said in a statement Friday.
Agbaba claimed that some circles wanted to draw CHP into a project for preventing “the fall of a rotten and corrupt government," which, he said, they would not allow.
The deputy chairman alleged that the post-election climate was the new stage of a years-long "unjust, remorseless and severe perception management against the CHP."
"The Republican People's Party is aware of the responsibility that these [post-election] conditions put on its shoulders," he said. He assured that they would not leave Turkish citizens desperate or the country without a government.
His remarks came as political parties in Turkey evaluated their coalition options in the aftermath of Sunday's general elections. However, rather than actual contacts among the political parties after the polls, there has just been an unofficial trade of words over coalition possibilities so far.
In his Thursday address to the provincial heads of Justice and Development (AK) Party, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned: "A [post-election] political equation excluding the AK Party, though out of the question, would lead to a scene where politics is defined by ethnic and sectarian splits."
The third-placed Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) also issued a statement where they ruled out the possibility of forming a coalition with the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
"Let it be known that the MHP does not get in the same bag with snakes," said Member of Parliament Semih Yalcin Thursday. "They (HDP) have the blood of our soldiers, our policemen, our civilians and many Kurdish people on their hands," Yalcin added.
None of the four parties elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly could achieve the majority necessary to form a single-party government.
According to unofficial results, the AK Party won its fourth consecutive general election Sunday, securing the largest number of votes to claim 258 seats, or 41 percent votes, in the parliament, but it was 18 short of a simple majority.
The CHP won 132 seats with 24.96 percent, while the MHP claimed 80 seats with 16.29 percent votes.
The HDP passed the 10 percent threshold with 13.12 percent votes to take 80 seats - marking the first time it will enter the parliament as a party.
The turnout was 86.64 percent. Although the initial count has been completed, the figures still need to be verified by the Supreme Election Council, which is due to get completed by June 19.
Once the final results are announced, the deputies of the 25th Grand National Assembly will be sworn in within five days. The constitutional deadline to form a new government will expire around August 18.
