Turkey’s main nationalist party cuts alliance with President Erdogan’s AKP

The head of Turkey’s main nationalist party has announced it won’t go ahead with an electoral alliance it had forged with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Devlet Bahceli of the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, said it would field its own candidates in the March 2019 local elections. The split with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) comes amid conflict over amnesty for certain prisoners that the nationalists have proposed, AP said. “We will now chart our own path. We do not plan to ally,” Bahceli told lawmakers. MHP was a key part of Erdogan’s electoral alliance in this summer’s parliamentary and presidential elections. The president’s party failed to reach parliamentary majority and must rely on the nationalist lawmakers.