Refah and Fazilet Parties
During the 1990s Refah was the fastest-growing political party in Turkey; when it was closed down in 1998, the Fazilet party took its place. In 1983 the Refah (Welfare) party was founded and headed by the leader of political Islam in Turkey, Necmettin Erbakan (b. 1926). It replaced the National Salvation party, which, after serving in different coalition governments during the 1970s, was closed down in 1980 by the military regime that suspended parliamentary politics. Starting with a 4.4 percent vote in 1984, Refah steadily increased its showing and multiplied its vote nearly five times in twelve years. Refah alarmed the secular establishment of Turkey by achieving a big leap of popularity, first in the municipal elections of 1994, with 19 percent of all votes nationwide and the mayors' seats in both Istanbul and Ankara (the two largest cities in the country), and then in the general elections of 1995, when it won a plurality with 21.4 percent of the national vote.
Refah briefly led a coalition government (June 1996–July 1997) with the right-wing True Path party before military pressure forced it out of power. In early 1998 the Constitutional Court closed down Refah for violating the principle of secularism and banned its leader, Erbakan, from politics for five years. Refah was immediately replaced by the Fazilet (Virtue) party, which inherited Refah's political cadres and parliamentary seats but was more circumspect and eager to distance itself from Refah's legacy. Fazilet, too, was closed down by the Constitutional Court in June 2001, leading to the split of the movement into two separate political parties.
Refah owed its ascendance to the crisis of mainstream politics in Turkey, and the party reflected the decline of the state ideology, Kemalism, which had directed the Turkish project of Westernization. Challenging the basic pro-Western orientation of this ideology and radically opposing the status quo, Refah's Islamist themes appealed to a wide range of disaffected social segments. Refah confounded the left-right division by leading a multiclass political movement that sought changes in lifestyle, culture, and ideology. The party cut through class divisions by uniting, around a common Islamic identity, elements from all classes who were marginalized in relation to the politics and ideology of the Kemalist state. Party members found in Refah an alternative identity around which to build networks of solidarity.
Turkish Islamism's social base was traditionally among the small-scale, provincial businesspeople. Refah expanded this base to win the support of both the impoverished working-class population in big cities, left unprotected by the now-defunct welfare state, and of upwardly mobile people seeking opportunities and acceptance. The latter included new and currently marginal, but rapidly growing, export-oriented sectors of the capitalist class and some ideologically marginal but highly vocal members of the young professional middle class, including students. Refah's political Islam, then, was not a traditionalist relic and did not originate from a backward-looking position.
Refah's closure caused political Islam to recast itself in Turkey. Fazilet, Refah's immediate successor, shed the radical elements of Refah's political ideology and claimed to be the champion of human rights and democracy. Yet both Refah and Fazilet shared the same exclusionary approach to political rights that were demanded for members and supporters but denied to the opposition and detractors. Neither Refah nor Fazilet were capable of developing an inclusive politics or a language for expanding political freedoms; instead both parties focused on capturing the institutions of state power through political ploys.
Further Reading
Gülalp, Haldun. (1999) "The Poverty of Democracy in Turkey: The Refah Party Episode." New Perspectives on Turkey 21: 35–59.
———. (2001) "Globalization and Political Islam: The Social Bases of Turkey's Welfare Party." International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, 3: 433–448.
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