page_title: Good Party
section_title: MHP leadership challenge
hierarchical_section_title: Good Party / Background / MHP leadership challenge
caption_attribution_description: English: Nationalist Movement Party Extraordinary Congress 19 June 2016
context_page_description: The Good Party, is a nationalist, liberal-conservative, secularist political party in Turkey which aims to overcome social injustice by forming a well functioning social state. Established on 25 October 2017 by its current leader Meral Akşener, the party adheres to the principles and ideals of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Their fraternal party is the liberal-conservative Democrat Party.
  It follows a centrist political ideology and puts a particular emphasis on the restoration of the parliamentary system and the integrity of the judiciary and other institutions. The party has been widely described as an anti-Erdoğanist alternative for right-leaning voters disillusioned with both the Nationalist Movement Party and the governing Justice and Development Party. In addition to meaning 'good', the name İyi is also inspired by the Kayı tribe flag.
  The party was formed by prominent former members of Turkey's main established parties, most notably the MHP and the main opposition Republican People's Party.
context_section_description: Meral Akşener, a former Minister of the Interior who served from 1996 to 1997, was a prominent member of parliament from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) from 2007 to November 2015, having been a member of the centre-right True Path Party (DYP) during her ministerial career. Her relation with MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli became noticeably strained after Bahçeli refused to nominate her for another term as Deputy Speaker of the Grand National Assembly after the June 2015 general election, a post she had held since 2007. Bahçeli eventually withdrew her parliamentary nomination before the November 2015 snap election, resulting in her losing her parliamentary seat.
  The MHP, having won 16.29% of the vote and 80 seats in June 2015, suffered a heavy defeat in the November snap election with just 11.90% of the vote and 40 seats. The loss was widely blamed on Bahçeli's refusal to consider any coalition agreement after the June 2015 election resulted in a hung parliament. The significant loss resulted in MHP dissidents including Akşener launching a drive to unseat Bahçeli from the party's leadership, a process made difficult by the party's strict bylaws. Other prominent MHP dissidents who declared their candidacy for the leadership included Ümit Özdağ, Koray Aydın and Sinan Oğan. Özdağ and Aydın would eventually join Akşener in forming the İyi Party, as did prominent MHP dissident MPs Yusuf Halaçoğlu, İsmail Ok and Nuri Okutan.
  With several MHP delegates supporting the dissidents' drive for a fresh leadership election, Akşener and the other leadership candidates joined forces to hold a constitutional convention, claiming they had the right to do so due to surpassing the required number of delegate signatures required. The MHP leadership boycotted the congress and declared it illegal, taking the process to court. The courts eventually upheld the claim that enough signatures had been submitted and forced the MHP leadership to hold a congress. In a controversial move, another court and the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey (YSK) both struck down the ruling and asked the MHP leadership to not hold a congress. The move was widely seen as an interference in the judicial process and inner-party democracy by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Ministry of Justice, which both had an interest in keeping the increasingly cooperative Bahçeli as MHP leader and preventing Akşener from mounting a challenge to the government. Akşener and several other dissidents were expelled from the party in the following months, mounting unsuccessful challenges against their suspensions. The constitutional convention held in June 2016 was annulled by the courts in January 2017.
caption: MHP dissidents including Akşener hold an extraordinary congress, eventually nullified by the courts
exif: {}