Erdogan discusses alliance with far-right leader

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday welcomed the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli at his Ankara palace to discuss details of an alliance for the elections next year.

Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been negotiating with MHP for over two months now to form a joint bloc in the country’s parliamentary, local, and presidential elections.

Privately-owned Hurriyet daily reported that they discussed the name of the right-wing bloc, with Erdogan proposing “National Consensus” and Bahceli coming up with “Star and Crescent,” a reference to the two symbols on the Turkish flag.

The two agreed to keep advocating a strong presidential form of governance, centralized administration, and upholding the 10 percent parliamentary election threshold, already the highest among world democracies.

During the meeting, Bahceli reiterated his support for the Turkish army’s now almost one month-long attempted invasion of the besieged enclave of Afrin in Syrian Kurdistan, dubbed as jihad by some top officials of the NATO member country.

The ultranationalist, anti-Western MHP and the Islamist-rooted AKP developed a deepening partnership in the aftermath of the 2015 collapse of peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the following year’s failed military coup to overthrow Erdogan’s rule.

Bahceli had already announced that his party would support Erdogan in the presidential elections as their parties were in talks over details on how to share votes in parliamentary and local elections.

The two sides have come even closer as the military, backing its Syrian Islamist proxies, staged the incursion into Afrin where continued airstrikes and shelling have killed up to 180 civilians and displaced over 60,000.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany