ISTANBUL: 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 Tuesday in parliament, 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 comes amid conflict over an amnesty for certain prisoners that the nationalists have proposed.
“We will now chart our own path. We do not plan to ally,” Bahceli said as his lawmakers cheered.
MHP was a key part of Erdogan’s electoral alliance in this summer’s parliamentary and presidential elections. Erdogan’s party failed to reach parliamentary majority and must rely on the nationalist lawmakers.
Turkey’s nationalists cut alliance with Erdogan’s party
Turkey’s nationalists cut alliance with Erdogan’s party
- Erdogan’s party failed to reach parliamentary majority and must rely on the nationalist lawmakers
- The split with the ruling Justice and Development Party comes amid conflict over an amnesty for certain prisoners
Two Tunisia columnists handed over three years in prison
- Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies have already been in detention for almost two years
- They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering
TUNIS: Two prominent Tunisian columnists were sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in prison each for money laundering and tax evasion, according to a relative and local media.
The two men, Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies, have already been in detention for almost two years for statements considered critical of President Kais Saied’s government, made on radio, television programs and social media.
They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
“Three and a half years for Mourad and Borhen,” Zeghidi’s sister, Meriem Zeghidi Adda, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Since Saied’s power grab, which granted him sweeping powers on July 25, 2021, local and international NGOs have denounced a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia.
Dozens of opposition figures and civil society activists are being prosecuted under a presidential decree officially aimed at combatting “fake news” but subject to a very broad interpretation denounced by human rights defenders.
Others, including opposition leaders, have been sentenced to heavy prison terms in a mega-trial of “conspiracy against state security.”
In 2025, Tunisia fell 11 places in media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, dropping from 118th to 129th out of 180 countries.
