Touched but not sunk. If the AKP, the presidential party suffered a real debacle during the municipal elections in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains, at 70 years old, the president for at least four more years. The election will also have given rise to the emergence of the Turkish Islamic party Yeniden Refah. The latter made a breakthrough at the polls, to the point of establishing itself as the third force in these municipal elections, bringing together 6.2% of the votes at the national level. What do we know about this party? The summary with 20 minutes.
Where does this party come from?
Yeniden Refah claims the heritage of Necmettin Erbakan, the influential politician… and mentor of the young Erdogan. Then aged 21, the future Turkish president took his first steps in politics there. Pushed by his spiritual father, he won the mayoralty of Istanbul in 1994, under the colors of the Refah party.
But his relationship with his mentor deteriorates when Erdogan tries to overthrow him. The link will be definitively broken when the elected official launches, with his companions, the AKP in 2002. This will put a serious stop to Refah, thus losing its former influence. Nine years later, in 2011, Necmettin Erbakan died.
Fatih Erbakan, one of the sons of “hodja”, decided to relaunch the party in 2018 and gave it another name: Yeniden Refah.
What line does he take?
Yeniden Refah defends a more rigid Islamo-conservative vision of the world than the AKP, which favors “morals and spiritual values”. “We will close LGBT associations when we are in power. It is a heresy prohibited in all religions,” warns its leader straight away.
The party also opposes feminism. In 2021, he defended Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, which aims to combat violence against women.
Recently, he has made himself known above all by denouncing the maintenance of commercial relations between Turkey and Israel despite the war in Gaza. According to analysts, Yeniden Refah won many votes by placing the war in Gaza and inflation – 67.1% over one year – at the center of its campaign.
Can Yeniden Refah overshadow Erdogan?
By contributing to the setback suffered by Erdogan on Sunday, Erbakan’s son avenged his father, some observers believe. Remember that his party won on Sunday the provinces of Sanliurfa and Yozgat which were previously led by AKP mayors.
The Islamists had supported Erdogan’s candidacy during the 2023 presidential election but the tide seems to have turned. “We must not trust those who try to make us lose, even if they have been at our side for a while,” noted Reis a few days ago.
Given the results of the municipal elections, the Turkish president could however be tempted to reconnect with his former ally, observers believe. “The electoral breakthrough of Yeniden Refah, which fared better than Erdogan’s nationalist ally, the MHP (Nationalist Action Party), could change Erdogan’s calculations and make him reshuffle his electoral alliance” , predicts Gönül Tol, director of the Turkey program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.