Hoping to court the votes of disillusioned nationalist voters, the Good Party (IP) continues to go downhill in its race to carve out a niche in the Turkish opposition. The party lost some 100,000 members in the past seven months, the Sabah newspaper reported on Monday.
Official figures show that the party had 568,918 members in May 2022, one year before general elections and this number rose to 617,513 in January 2023. Yet, the election year proved disastrous for the IP, especially after then-Chair Meral Akşener threatened to leave a six-party opposition alliance against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. When Erdoğan won the May runoff, the party took another blow. In January 2024, the IP had 508,578 members and was still hopeful for upcoming municipal elections. But the March 31 vote had only disappointing results for the party, which trailed far behind other opposition parties with a vote rate lower than 4%.
Along with members, the party lost 12 lawmakers in about one year after legislative elections, during which it secured 44 seats in Parliament. Several local branches of the party resigned en masse upon failure at general and municipal elections. Currently, the party has about 400,000 members.
Müsavat Dervişoğlu, who took over the party’s chairperson in May, admitted earlier this month that more people may leave the party. “There may be new resignations, and I can ask those not fulfilling their responsibilities to step down,” he told reporters earlier this month.
Koray Aydın, one of the party’s founders and a stalwart in Turkish nationalist circles for decades, was one of the last prominent names to quit the party in late June. In the municipal elections, the IP, which secured only 3.77% of the vote, trailed behind the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose former members include Akşener, Aydın and Dervişoğlu, among many others.
“It is no bed of roses for the IP,” Dervişoğlu acknowledged. “But I won’t beg anyone who intends to leave,” he added. “Still, it is not true that a storm is brewing in the Good Party as claimed. We are fine. There may be people among us with different ambitions, which is only natural in politics. Resignations will not impact us,” he was quoted by the media outlets.
