Muharrem Ince is a Turkish politician and teacher born in 1964 in the Turkish state of Yalova. He held several parliamentary and party positions for the Republican People's Party (CHP) and ran for it in the 2018 presidential elections.
He defected from the party in 2021 and founded a new party called the Balad Party, headed it, and put forward his project as an alternative to the government and the traditional opposition at the same time. He ran for the Turkish presidential elections in May 2023.
Birth and upbringing
Muharrem Ince was born on 4 May 1964 in the village of Elmalik in Yalova (Yalova) province, the son of an immigrant from the Greek city of Thessaloniki, and his mother hails from the city of Rize in northeastern Turkey.
Study and scientific training
He completed his primary education in his village, his secondary education at Yalova Industrial Vocational High School, and graduated from the Department of Physics and Chemistry at Uludag University.
Functions and responsibilities
After graduating, he worked as a teacher of physics and chemistry in various secondary schools and private educational institutions, some of which he worked as a principal.
Apart from education, he served as spokesperson for Yalua Spor Sports Club and as regional president of the Kemali Thought Association.
Muharram Ince during a speech at the launch rally of the Country Party in 2021 (French)
Political experience
- Entering Parliament
Ince began running in the 1995 parliamentary elections when he ran for the Republican People's Party (CHP), but was unable to enter parliament. The same experience was repeated in the 1999 elections.
In 1998 he was elected chairman of the Republican People's Party for the state of Yalova. He entered parliament as a deputy of the People's Party in Yalova in all general elections held between 2002 and 2015, and served as deputy chairman of the CHP parliamentary group for two consecutive terms after 2011.
- Parliamentary activity
During his work in parliament, he was active in the education file and became a member of the National Education Committee. He opposed the proposal to parliament to repeal legislation restricting Imam and Khatib high school graduates with a low average on the university entrance exam.
Muharram Ince with his wife speaking at a rally to launch the new party (French)
Despite its opposition to the compulsory religious lessons that the AKP wanted to add to the curriculum, it announced that it would not oppose these lessons, provided that they were truly optional.
He supported solving the problems of veiled university students and criticized the government for not being able to solve them quickly enough.
He opposed Deniz Baykal's leadership of the CHP in its second term, and signed a declaration in 2004 calling for an extraordinary congress to overthrow him.
He resigned as deputy chairman of the parliamentary group in 2014 to compete with Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu at the CHP Extraordinary Congress on August 18, 2014.
- Candidacy for the 2018 presidential elections
He ran for the Republican People's Party (CHP) in the 2018 Turkish presidential elections, and came second only to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and received 30.67% of the votes, or 15,216,199 votes.
After losing to Erdogan in the first round, he called an extraordinary congress to oust his party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, but was unable to gather enough signatures to hold the congress. After his efforts failed, he began to hint at the need to operate from outside the CHP, directing harsh criticism of his leadership.
Muharrem Ince at a press conference to assess election results in Ankara on June 25, 2018 (Reuters)
Establishment of the Country Party
On April 2020, 1919, corresponding to the anniversary of the <> Cephas Conference, one of the founding congresses of the Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal that paved the way for the establishment of the republic, Ince launched a political movement called the "Movement of the Country in a Thousand Days" in the state of Sivas, in his first announced move out of the mantle of the Republican People's Party.
He then officially announced his resignation from the People's Party on February 5, 2020, in parallel with his efforts to transform the movement of the country into a political party, and officially announced its establishment on May 17, 2021.
Candidacy for the 2023 presidential elections
Ince came close to entering into an alliance with the head of the far-right Zafar Party, Ümet Özdağ, with the announcement in December 2022 of an agreement to form a political alliance of four opposition parties to run in the 4 presidential and parliamentary elections. However, the Balad Party withdrew from the alliance under establishment on March 2023, 4.
On March 21, 2023, Ince submitted his candidacy papers for the presidency of the Republic in the elections of the same year, and the Supreme Election Commission announced on the 27th of the same month the acceptance of his candidacy, after he managed to collect 100,<> power of attorney.
Muharrem Ince is competing with three other candidates: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Six-Party Table and Nation Alliance candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and ancestral alliance candidate Sinan Ogan.