Ruling AK Party, MHP agree in principle to continue alliance

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) agreed Tuesday in principle to continue their alliance in the upcoming local elections.

The two parties, which previously formed the People's Alliance for the June presidential elections, will continue their alliance to continue cooperation in the March 2019 local elections, AK Party vice chairman Mehmet Özhaseki said Tuesday, adding that meetings between the delegations would be held soon.

"The MHP will continue its reconciliatory and common-sense approach in a period when Turkey struggles for its survival. We do not desire the gains in the June 24 elections to be lost on March 31," MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli said earlier this month.

In the 2014 local elections, the MHP won three metropolitan municipalities with around 10 percent of the total votes, while AK Party won 18 out of the 30 metropolitan municipalities with around 60 percent of the votes.

The AK Party and the MHP decided to form a political alliance for the presidential and parliamentary elections when Bahçeli announced that his party would not name a candidate for the 2019 presidential elections and would support the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan instead. As a result, the alliance, named the People's Alliance, won 340 seats in Parliament, 290 by the AK Party and 50 by the MHP.