The Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP) was an Islamist political party in Turkey. It was founded by Ali Türkmen, Ahmet Tekdal and Necmettin Erbakan in Ankara in 1983 as heir to two earlier parties, (National Order Party, MNP) and (National Salvation Party, MSP), which were banned from politics. The RP participated in mayoral elections at that time and they won in three cities- Konya, Şanlıurfa, and Van. Their vote percentage was approximately 5%.
Welfare Party participated in the 1991 elections in a triple alliance with MÇP and Reformist Democracy Party (IDP). They gained 16.9% of the vote. They won 62 deputies but 19 ones of MÇP (with founding Democratic Movement Party in 25 December 1991 and joining the MÇP in 29 December 1991) and 3 ones of IDP left RP after it. Their popular vote increased over the years until they became the largest party under Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan in 1996. The coalition government of Erbakan was forced out of power by the Turkish military in 1997, due to being suspected of having an Islamist agenda.
In 1998 the Welfare Party was banned for violating the principle of secularism in the constitution. The ban was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on 13 February 2003. The ECHR's decision was criticized by Human Rights Watch for lack of consistency, as the ECHR had refused disbanding of other parties in several occasions.
Famous quotes containing the words welfare and/or party:
“You can’t talk about a kind of democracy unless those who are affected by decisions make those decisions whether the institutions in question be the welfare department, the university, the factory, the farm, the neighborhood, the country.”
—Casey Hayden (b. c. 1940)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)