MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli urges President Erdoğan to seek another term in 2028, vowing full backing while addressing mayoral trials and peace efforts.
ANKARA – Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli has called on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to seek another term in the 2028 elections, pledging his party’s full backing.
“I support our president continuing in office under any circumstances. If he chooses to run in 2028, we as MHP will stand firmly behind him,” Bahçeli said in a Sept. 12 interview.
Bahçeli, a long-time ally of Erdoğan, praised his leadership since the failed 2016 coup attempt and said current economic and social challenges were “not insurmountable.”
He also urged prosecutors to finalize indictments against arrested mayors by October and backed calls for their trials to be broadcast live on TRT.
On the government’s “terror-free Türkiye” initiative, Bahçeli expressed support for reinstating dismissed DEM Party mayor Ahmet Türk, as well as for former CHP mayor Ahmet Özer, while stressing the need to distinguish between peace efforts and corruption cases.
