Mustafa Nedim Yamalı, who announced his resignation from the opposition Future Party (GP) on Tuesday, officially joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Wednesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally congratulated Yamalı as he attended a parliamentary group meeting of the ruling party.
“I believe political movements close to each other in the conservative community should be united,” Yamalı told reporters on the sidelines of the parliamentary group meeting in the capital Ankara.
Yamalı was among the founders of the AK Party’s Ankara branch in the early 2000s and served as head of the Ankara branch between 2014 and 2018, before joining GP which is chaired by another former AK Party member, Ahmet Davutoğlu.
His resignation cost the Felicity Party (SP) a parliamentary group. SP, which is also a proponent of conservative politics, had joined forces with GP to create a parliamentary group. The number of GP lawmakers in Parliament also dropped to eight with Yamalı’s resignation. Having a parliamentary group gives an advantage to small parties to have offices in Parliament and weekly briefings to explain their policies at Parliament.
His resignation comes at a time of rumored departures from the GP and the SP, which recently elected a new chairperson after the lengthy reign of Temel Karamollaoğlu. Davutoğlu himself was reported to have joined his former party, though he denied the claims. Political pundits say more lawmakers from the GP may switch sides to the AK Party, while the GP and the SP, along with the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) are in the early stages of talks to establish an “umbrella party” that would also include lawmakers from the Democrat Party (DP) and the New Welfare Party (YRP).