Opposition Felicity and Future parties to form alliance for upcoming local elections

Ceren Bayar / Gazete Duvar

Turkish opposition’s right-wing parties Felicity (Saadet) and Future (Gelecek) will form an alliance for the 2024 local elections. The two parties previously formed a parliamentary group by uniting under the Felicity Party.

Both parties entered the parliamentary elections on May 14 from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) list and gained 10 MPs each as part of the Nation Alliance. A party needs a minimum of 20 MPs to form a parliamentary group.

Accordingly, the Future Party, which will enter the local elections for the first time, established a commission to analyze the best candidates for mayorship.

A Future Party politician said “Our primary goal is to field our own candidates in all constituencies. But there may be places where we are strong and where we are weak. In this case, we will support the Felicity Party if the Felicity Party is stronger in places where the probability of the Future Party to win is low, (or vice versa).”

The politician said “this cooperation” does not mean that there will be “no cooperation with other parties” and added “Where both parties are weak, if another opposition party, say the İYİ Party, has a strong candidate that we can support politically, we are open to cooperation with them.”

The politician said in addition to maximizing the electoral district that the Future Party will win, they also have other priorities such as preserving the existing municipalities of the Nation Alliance and winning the municipalities who are run by the ruling AKP or MHP. “This election will end the speculation about our party's vote share.”

On the other hand, the Felicity Party, which continues to hold council meetings throughout Turkey and listens to the post-election evaluations of its organizations, will intensify its local election activities as of September.

A Felicity Party politician said they are preparing for the local elections as if they are going to field their own candidates in all electoral districts, but the Felicity and Future parties will combine both their cadres and electoral power in order to increase the gains.

The politician said that they will shape all processes together with the Future Party, and that they focus more on the performance of the candidates after the election rather than determining the name of the candidate in the local elections.

“There are only 87 constituencies in the general elections, but there are close to 1,400 municipalities in the local elections. Since the votes taken in each constituency concern only that constituency and there is no separate result determined by the total votes throughout Turkey –such as the presidential election– we are working as if we will enter each constituency on our own. We are also open to collaborations. However, an alliance in all Turkey is not on the agenda,” the politician added.

(English version by Alperen Şen)