Bilge Yılmaz, who left his post as Deputy Chairman after the March 31 Local Elections, announced that he also resigned from his party.
Yılmaz used the following statements in his statement on his social media account:
“Dear İyi Party Members,
Since 2021, I have fought a political struggle with you to live in a more democratic and prosperous country. When I came to Turkey, I thought that the İyi Party could convince millions of reasonable voters who dream of a better Turkey, including those who supported the government, and that it had the staff and discourse to achieve this.
Frankly, I met many people with expertise and good character at the party who did not mislead me in my expectations. The sincerity of these people and their love for their country encouraged me to work for my party. İyi Party was a candidate actor to fill the gap demanded by the voters with a correct institutional structure and strong leadership.
However, over time, we all saw the weaknesses of the party. The institutional structure of our party collapsed in the face of people’s interests, tendencies and expectations. Party leader Mr. Meral Akşener, on the other hand, had a bad negotiation process at every stage of the Six-Party Table process and could not prevent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy. This process resulted in leaving the table with a harsh and emotional reaction on March 3 and returning to the table 3 days later by accepting the 7 vice president model. This inconsistency drained the leader’s political credit.
Over the past year, we have followed a leadership style that constantly has a victim mentality, looks for the source of all its problems outside, and legitimizes itself only by being hostile to the outside world.
What remains is a party that can no longer speak outside itself and can only attract the public’s attention with sensational news and scandals. Many well-intentioned, pure-character people look at the parliamentary candidate lists and mayoral candidates and think that they have been treated unfairly and that they have wasted their efforts in vain. Citizens who vote for the party show their reactions by either not going to the polls or by voting for other parties. This is the point we have reached.
I have stated many times in 2023, both in authorized committees and publicly, that the İyi Party has a key duty to achieve good governance in our country and that it has to solve its institutional problems.
At the request of our chairman, I withdrew in December 2023 to give the party leadership one last chance. Unfortunately, as the bad trend continued, on February 28, 2024, I announced that personal interests had come before common goals and that opposition parties needed to be restructured in order to win the general election.
We have a congress process ahead of us and Mr. Meral Akşener showed exemplary behavior and announced that she would not be a candidate. However, it will not be possible for the İyi Party to get out of this trap with the atmosphere created by the competition of the current chairman candidates.
My hope was different in this process. As a party, we had to approach the point we have reached with common sense and move the issue beyond the presidential competition. The issue of the İyi Party is not who will be the leader, but how the party will turn into a hopeful structure that can speak to the whole society again. I see that we are far from that point.
Wrong choices made for more than a year are pushing me to leave the İyi Party and work under a new structure for our country. However, I waited during the election process so as not to harm the party and not to betray the GCC membership authority given to me by the delegate.
I am leaving İyi Parti with the peace of mind that I tried to do my best. I am grateful to all the patriotic people I had the opportunity to work with at İyi Parti. I wish success to everyone, especially the presidential candidates, in the next congress. “
