CHAPTER FOUR: THE PLACE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE “VIEWS OF UMMAH” MOVEMENT IN TURKEY
4.3 Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, WP) .1 The Foundation of Welfare Party
4.3.5 Elections in 1994 and 1995
The points explained by a parliament member of the period seemed to support the discourse in WP's election bulletin. Nominating candidates for each region and municipality 'even if it is known that the election will not be won' was a strategy, which was not adopted in Turkey before.
WP. However, focusing on the results of local elections in 1994, it was clearly 314 observed that all these disparaging works weren’t respected by the society.
The winner of 1994 local elections in Turkey was indisputably the WP. It got the two metropolitan municipalities; the biggest city Istanbul and the capital Ankara. The voting rate of the parties in 1994 was as below:315
The Welfare Party: 22,40 % The Motherland Party:21,79 %
The Social Democratic Populist Party:19,68 % The True Path Party:15,88 %
In just several months, the WP, Erbakan’s party, introduced many services in its municipalities that it got in local elections in 1994. Thanks to this, the WP participated in the general elections on December 24, 1995. For this election, Erbakan visited the cities one by one, and had impressive discourses in meetings with the experienced politician Aydın Menderes, son of former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. In this way, he managed to impress most of the voters, and thus made his party winner. WP’s rise to the status of a nationwide political 316 movement, as opposed to a party confined mainly to its inner Anatolian roots, was consolidated further by the general elections of December 1995. Coming 317 to the first position in this election, the WP reached its greatest success in its history with 21% vote rate.
In the electoral declaration published before the elections, the WP clearly emphasized its future policies. Some of the policies are mentioned below:
The WP;
- upholds just the truth despite the aper political parties which uphold power, and thinks power superior to truth.
“Anketler sandığı etkiliyor mu?”, Sabah, 16 Şubat 1994; “Anketlerin hepsi değişecek”, Sabah, 18 314
Şubat 1994.
Available at: http://www.secimsonucu.com/GenelSecimSonuclari.asp?SY=1994 315
Henry Barkey, “Turkey, Islamic Politics, and the Kurdish Question”, World Policy Journal, 23 316
(Spring 1996), p. 43-52.
Öniş, ibid., pp. 743.
317
- sides with full independence instead of a “puppet state” of the Western world.
- upholds the “Just Economic Order” despite the ‘heavy usurious and capitalist order’.
- prioritizes “servant state” model which respects to individual rights and freedoms despite the oppressive regimes of police states.
- fights against unemployment via the project of ‘Just Order’ and productional campaign with ‘foursquare’ staffs.
- applies the economical formulas of Views of Ummah instead of IMF-supported economic programs or solutions.
- removes financial difficulties of society and let it reach the welfare via economic policy.
- ends command democracy and brings real democracy to Turkey by preventing the oppression of the Muslims.
- founds a real ‘Democratic Constitutional State’. 318
In the interview with Alaattin Sahin, graduated from Faculty of Political Science in Ankara University and member of Board of Overseers in Sifa University, he told how he was impressed by the WP’s election campaign in these statements:
“After Ozal’s death, I voted for the WP in 1994-1995 because the center-right parties didn’t have promising future to society. It had a different sound in Turkish policy. However, other parties did not mention any improvement. One of the factors for my vote was that the people who were bound up with the WP were possibly more honest. In 1994-1995, the WP’s campaign made the public participate in politics. Istanbul was an example of that situation. The WP representatives had strong bonds with people. Women first took
For more information see: Election Bulletin of Welfare Party, Turkish Grand National Assembly 318
Library, 24 December 1995.
place in politics in a religious-based platform. As is known to all, women are shy in conservative societies, and they don’t easily take part in the public sphere or politics. However, women had a chance to do politics thanks to the WP’s women’s branch.”319
Even though the WP got the plurality in the general election of 1995, it could not form the government alone, so it was forced to form a coalition. The president Suleyman Demirel gave the duty of forming the government to Erbakan, but no other party wanted to associate with the WP. Because of the WP’s despair in forming the government, Demirel gave the duty to the second party, the TPP. However, Tansu Ciller, the leader of TPP, suffered the same 320 fate that Erbakan faced, and he returned the duty to President Demirel.
Eventually, the duty was in the hand of Mesut Yılmaz, the leader of the ANAP, and the coalition was formed between ANAP and TPP. The ANAP-TPP coalition government was to reach absolute majority vote which was 276 out of 550 for a vote of confidence, but they could not reach the majority, because the DSP did not participate in voting. Although there was an obvious failure of coalition parties for vote of confidence, still they got it unconstitutionally.
Thereupon, the WP applied to the Constitutional Court, and on May 14, the Constitutional Court decided in favor of the WP. This created a need of new vote of confidence for the coalition parties, but the cancellation of new voting caused the fall of the ANAP-TPP coalition government in the end. 321
After the fall of ANAP-TPP coalition government, Erbakan started negotiations with Tansu Ciller, the leader of TPP, and fortunately, these two parties managed to form a new WP-TPP coalition government under the presidency of Erbakan. With the new coalition, some changes in the speeches of Erbakan were observed. The fifth party convention of the WP, held on October
The interview with Alaattin Şahin, Izmir, 05.04.2016 319
Özdemir, ibid., p. 175.
320
Süleyman Kocabaş, Refahyol Hükümeti Sonunun Perde Arkası, Vatan Publication, Istanbul, 1997, p.
321 54.
13, 1996, clearly showed the changes in the party. Unlike previous party conventions, the party executives were more prudent. Going up to the rostrum as the Prime Minister for the first time in his life, Erbakan delivered a quite gentle speech unlike his former speeches in the period when the WP was an opposition party. In his speech, he did not mention ‘Just Order’ or other projects and proposals of the WP but focused on a political consensus with a Secular front. He also told that he was a real follower of M.Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey and the first president, and had good relations with Turkish Armed Forces. He emphasized that the WP rescued the Turkish society from the political vacuum resulted from Ozal’s death in 1993. 322