Erdoğan's March 31 move: AKP agrees to cooperate with two parties

As the AKP prepares to announce a large number of mayoral candidates tomorrow (January 7), particularly in Istanbul, cooperation talks are also continuing at full speed.

In this context, delegations from the AKP, the Democratic Left Party (DSP), and the Great Unity Party (BBP) met yesterday at the AKP Headquarters to discuss local cooperation.

AGREEMENT WITH DSP AND BBP COMPLETE

According to information received, the delegations reached a consensus on cooperation for the local elections and will meet again at the beginning of the week to clarify the details of this cooperation.

Secretary General Hasan Erçelebi, who was on the delegation for the DSP, stated, "The main theme of the meeting is for the People's Alliance to emerge from the local elections as successfully as possible."

Expressing that they discussed what needs to be done within this framework, Erçelebi said, "We will meet as delegations next Monday or Tuesday. We had held a meeting before, and we built upon that."

Stating that the meeting primarily focused on a "strategy for success in the election," Erçelebi said the following:

"We will have candidates not in metropolitan cities, but in districts and for municipal council memberships. We will have candidates wherever possible without harming the People's Alliance. There are districts we have won before, and there are new districts we will win. We will enter the race quite extensively at the district and town level. No names were mentioned. We will clarify those next week."

"WE DISCUSSED GENERAL PRINCIPLES"

Bülent İspir, Deputy Chairman of the BBP, who was on the delegation for the BBP, announced that they would meet again on Monday or Tuesday to concretely flesh out the working principles determined during the meeting.

Emphasizing that a consensus was reached on election cooperation to ensure that the success achieved by the People's Alliance in the general elections is maintained in the local elections, İspir made the following assessment:

"We made mutual statements regarding what kind of cooperation there will be on issues such as metropolitan cities, provinces, districts, municipal council memberships, and provincial general assembly memberships. There was a mutual consensus between the two parties to establish a unity so that the success achieved by the alliance can be continued in the local elections. We discussed the general principles."

Explaining that they attended the meeting with a study comparing the 2019 local election results, the vote shares received by the BBP and other parties in municipal council memberships in that election, and the results of the 2023 general elections, İspir noted the following:

"The AK Party has also conducted a study on which districts and towns we received the most votes in and how many municipalities we won in the previous election. It overlaps with ours. No names were discussed. No classification was made as 'metropolitan, provincial, and district.' We will meet to flesh out how we will cooperate in critical provinces, metropolitan cities, and other provinces."

Stating that they expressed during the meeting that the BBP fielding a candidate from Sivas, the hometown of their founding Chairman Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, would increase the organization's motivation in election efforts, İspir said, "They listened to our idea and said they would 'evaluate it'."