Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party is unwilling to join the ruling Justice and Development Party in a coalition alliance, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday after a meeting with officials of the party which was long considered its most probable partner.
Davutoglu is meeting MHP leaders as part of his search for a coalition partnership after the AKP lost its parliamentary majority in Turkey’s June 7 elections, AP reported.
The prime minister was given a mandate on July 9 to form a government. He has 45 days from that date to build a coalition and if he fails to do so, new elections will be called.
With more than a month to go before that deadline, Davutoglu told reporters after talks with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli that the far-right party would prefer to remain an opposition party.
Davutoglu did not rule out, however, more talks on forming a coalition with the party in future.
MHP was considered the ruling party’s most natural ally because the two parties share a common religious and conservative voter base.
Davutoglu is scheduled to meet officials from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party on Wednesday, although he has ruled out a coalition alliance with it.
AKP has 258 seats in the new parliament, the Republican People’s Party 132 and the MHP and HDP hold 80 apiece.
Earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned parties to keep his status out of their coalition-building efforts and said he would stand in the way of any deal that would nix his dream projects.
The election not only ended the ruling party’s 13-year single-party rule, but came as a blow to Erdogan’s ambitions to switch to a presidential system that would give him more executive powers.
