MHP to hold extraordinary congress on May 15

Turkey's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) will hold an extraordinary party congress on May 15, a three-person panel appointed by an Ankara court has said amid an intensification of inner-party disputes.

The panel, made up of Mehmet Bilgiç, Ayhan Erel and Ali Sa??r, held a meeting that lasted for 10 hours on April 18, after which the date was announced.

"In accordance with the authorization that the decision gives us and due to the MHP's bylaws, the necessary processes were started in order to hold the extraordinary congress. The process will be carried out by our panel and the first extraordinary meeting will be held on May 15 at 10 a.m.," a statement on April 19 said, adding that if a necessary majority was not reached in the first congress at the venue to be determined, a second meeting would be held in the same place on May 22.

One of the former MHP lawmakers who announced her intention to run for the party's leadership, Meral Ak?ener, said she would increase the party's votes, citing polls she had conducted.

"The AKP [the Justice and Development Party] has stable votes of 30 percent. It has an electorate that passed from ANAP [Motherland Party] of 19.5 percent. That amount of voters could shift to a MHP that I lead," Ak?ener told broadcaster Habertürk late on April 18, adding that the MHP would receive 25 percent of the votes in the next election if she were elected leader of the party.

"Because of the fact that I know the MHP's vote potential, the party's direction depends on our work," she said, stating that the results of the Nov. 1, 2015, election, in which the MHP only gained around 11 percent of the votes and won 40 seats in parliament, were a failure.

Commenting on the extraordinary party congress, Ak...