MHP head Bahçeli slams main opposition CHP for 'acting in line with HDP'

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli slammed Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) on May 16 for "acting in line with" the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). 

"The ultimate goal of the games being played with Turkey is known and clear. In the first round, they want to impose a multiple-identity and multi-national state structure by redefining the understanding of the national sovereignty. The CHP has stepped into the picture to support this," Bahçeli said in an address to his parliamentary group.

"The ultimate goal is to form Kurdistan and make it recognized. From within, there is [the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization] FETÖ and the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK; from outside, there is [the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party] PYD, the [People's Protection Units] YPG and [the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] ISIL. They have accelerated their efforts to break our survival and destroy us," he said.

Unlike the MHP, the CHP campaigned against constitutional amendments that were passed narrowly in a referendum on April 16, arguing that the changes would harm the principle of the separation of powers in Turkey. The CHP earlier announced that it will not partake in any process that would amount to "legitimizing the amendments."

"The CHP has commenced a new process to write a new, more democratic constitution," CHP Istanbul deputy Eren Erdem said on May 13, stating that in the upcoming period before the 2019 presidential election the CHP will work to consolidate all political segments that objected to the amendment.

MHP head Bahçeli slammed such a move as "an alignment with the HDP," after Erdem visited the HDP's imprisoned co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş in...