The Welfare Party once again attributed the success it achieved in the municipal elections to the national vision set by the late Necmettin Erbakan (Anatolia).

The results of the Turkish local elections caused a real shock and a state of astonishment and confusion among all Turkish parties, both the victors and the losers alike. This is a situation that will take a lot of time and effort to study, absorb, and extract lessons and lessons from.

Sudden rise

Aside from the reasons behind the victory of the opposition, or the failure of the ruling party, one of the most strange phenomena that emerged from these elections is the phenomenon of the Welfare Party once again transforming from a marginal party with no influence and no fear of it to its rise and occupying third place among the parties with the most votes. Voters' votes after the Republican People's Party and the Justice and Development Party.

His success in wresting the municipalities of Şanlıurfa and Yozgat from the clutches of the Justice and Development Party, in addition to winning the presidency of sixty-seven municipalities across Turkey, surpassing with this result parties that were more established, widespread, and popular than him, and even had a stronger influence on the Turkish arena, such as the Nationalist Movement and the Good parties.

The reason for the state of astonishment over the welfare results once again, as one of the most prominent and unexpected surprises, is that the bet was always on the Future parties, headed by Ahmet Davutoğlu, the former Prime Minister, and the Progress and Democracy Party, headed by Ali Babacan, in case the Islamists and conservatives who represent the voting base of the Justice and Development Party wanted to Punishing their party, and correcting its path through a simple “pinch of the ear” that alerts it to change course and return to the right path.

Foreign policy file

If the dispute is directly related to the mechanisms of the party’s handling of the foreign policy file, in the event that it conflicts with their principles that are based on the principles of Islam, then Ahmet Davutoglu and his Future Party were more deserving of these votes that refrained from voting for the Justice and Development Party, by virtue of being the founder of Turkey’s foreign policy and the main supporter. For rapprochement between his country and the countries of the Islamic world, and the most capable of correcting the path in this file, in order to ensure that Turkey returns once again to play the role of defender of the issues of the peoples of the Islamic world, and their spokesperson in international forums, and to seek to remove any differences that would hinder its fulfillment of this role, which gives it a status. Distinctive regional and international.

Economic crisis

However, if the issue is related to the economic crisis and the state of unprecedented high prices that ordinary citizens are suffering under, then Ali Babacan and his Democracy and Progress Party were most worthy of attracting the votes of those angry with the government’s economic policies, especially since Babacan was the architect of the economic policy of the Justice and Development Party at the beginning of its launch, which He created an economic boom and a state of prosperity and stability that the Turks had not enjoyed for decades, after he succeeded in bringing about an unprecedented shift in the Turkish economy that enabled it to raise the average per capita income.

But the compass of the Justice and Development voters who cast their votes was not directed towards this or that. Rather, they directed their votes to a direction that was not on the table, and had not occurred to anyone, as they headed towards the Welfare Party again, which is the party founded by Fatih Erbakan, the son of the Islamic leader Necmettin Erbakan. In 2018, after his separation from the Felicity Party, this is a sign that those concerned specifically with Turkey’s Islamic face should not mistake.

A road map for politicians

This vote came as if it was charting the way again for politicians, and explaining to them the form of authority that the Islamists desire to manage the country politically and economically, which is the form that stems from the theory of the late Necmettin Erbakan, and his approach to managing the country internally and externally in particular, and not according to the approach of other politicians even Even if they were among those who were raised by him, or grew up in the incubator of his party.

A sign that appears to be a real desire on the part of Turkey’s Islamists to return to the first sources upon which the political parties with an Islamic reference in the country were based, and their constants that rely on the principles of truth, justice, and equality, established by the late Necmettin Erbakan, and the Islamists and conservatives found that they no longer had a real existence. It is tangible in the practices of the parties that represent them on the scene, regardless of their names, after they spent more than twenty years in power.

This is something that Fatih Erbakan realized, as he worked since the founding of his party to adopt the national vision set by Necmettin Erbakan, which is based in its entirety on several basic points, which represented the intellectual source of all the parties formed by Erbakan himself, which is the necessity of working to revive Islamic civilization, He seeks to restore the unity of the Islamic world again, achieve political, economic and intellectual independence for Turkey, and distance it from Western hegemony, declaring that the main pillar of his party depends on the “Milli Gurush” movement, under which most of the Islamic groups and Sufi orders that are widespread in Turkish society fall.

Achieving the national vision

According to this vision, the Welfare Party once again agreed to join the public alliance with the Justice and Development Parties, the National Movement, the Grand Union, and Hoda Bar, after it was found that the opposition coalition’s candidate for the presidency, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, had no problem declaring that homosexuality does not represent He is a threat to the Turkish family, and does not portend its disintegration, and he does not hide his support for this group of deviants.

This is the alliance through which the party succeeded in reserving five seats in Parliament, its first since its founding, but after nearly ten months had passed, it rejected the invitation to join the People’s Alliance again to run in the local elections.

The decision to reject came after careful follow-up of the policies adopted by the government in terms of its political and economic relations, and its dealings with internal affairs, which in their entirety contradict the intellectual constants from which the party is based, and are completely far from the late Erbakan’s theory of governance, and the pillars from which Turkey’s internal practices must start. And its political and economic relations, whether with its regional surroundings, or when dealing with the Western world.

The head of the Welfare Party not only refused to join the electoral alliance with the Justice and Development Party, but in his electoral campaign he deliberately directed the harshest criticism of the government and its handling of issues that specifically concern the Islamic world, which greatly contradict Erbakan’s vision.

He attacked the Justice and Development Party by exploiting information that was circulating about the continuation of trade exchange between Turkey and Israel at a time when the latter was waging a war of extermination against Gaza, sometimes through military operations, bombings, and targeting hospitals, schools, and infrastructure, and at other times through adopting a policy of hunger to kill civilians from the population. City.

It is one of the files that caused a large gap between the Justice and Development Party and its voting base, in addition to the party’s handling of the issue of Sweden’s accession to NATO, its submission to meeting Washington’s desire at the expense of Turkey’s national security, its practices regarding the refugee file, in addition to the failures of its economic policies, and its failure to Its ability to meet the ambitions of citizens, so a large segment of them abstained from voting completely in these elections, amounting to about 10%, while others voted for the Welfare Party again, which succeeded in obtaining the votes of 6.19% of the voters’ votes nationwide.

Fatih Erbakan, who announced that the number of his party’s supporters increased by 100% during these elections, attributed this success achieved by the party to its tireless effort to revive the national vision set by the late Necmettin Erbakan, and to return to the source from which Islamic-oriented parties must draw their policies. In fulfillment of the desire of its supporters and those belonging to the Islamic movement... Is there anyone who will respond?!

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.