MHP purge continues as eleven administrators removed

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has removed 11 local party administrators from positions across Turkey, as the fallout continues from the party's poor performance in Nov. 1, 2015 general election. 

The MHP's executive board announced on Feb. 22 that the provincial administrators in Elaz??, Samsun, Tokat, K?rklareli, Tekirda?, Bayburt, Gümü?hane and Çorum, and the district administrators in former strongholds Elaz??, Bayburt and Gümü?hane have been removed from office. The party announced new appointments to some of these offices within a few hours.

MHP Deputy Chair ?efkat Çetin said in a written statement that disciplinary procedures had been initiated into the removed administrators. 

Unrest in the party began when Tu?rul Türke?, the former deputy leader and son of late founding leader Alparslan Türke?, accepted the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) offer of a position in the interim cabinet formed between the elections in June and November last year.  

Türke? was subsequently expelled from the MHP and is now a deputy prime minister in the AKP government formed after the November election. 

The MHP, which had won 80 seats at parliament in the June 7 election, won only 40 seats in the Nov. 1 election. 

MHP head Devlet Bahçeli's decision not to nominate Meral Ak?ener, a respected senior figure within the party, also stirred unrest ahead of the Nov. 1 election. A group of party delegates, mainly supporters of Ak?ener, collected enough signatures to call an extraordinary congress after the election but Bahçeli has insisted that the congress will not take place until March 2018. 

The opposition's push has now been taken to the courts. 

"Demands for an extraordinary congress have been...