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Turkey Forms New Islamic Party
ANKARA, Aug 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Some former members of the outlawed pro-Islamic Virtue Party, led by reformist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced the formation of the Justice and Development Party on Tuesday, news agencies reported.
In July, Virtue's conservative faction founded its own party, the Saadet - or Happiness Party - after the Turkish constitutional court had banned Virtue for anti-secular activities, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The court accused Virtue of being a "focal point" of anti-secular activities and of being an illegal continuation of the outlawed Welfare Party, which briefly held power five years ago.
Virtue has always denied the charge, emphasizing it is not an extension of Welfare.
Tuesday's move by moderates, who are also known as the "modernists" under Erdogan, the popular former mayor of Istanbul, meant a further division in the country's Islamic movement, said AFP.
They have also attracted support from moderate-right politicians as well as from political novices.
Cracks in Virtue's ranks emerged from the behind the scenes influence Necmettin Erbakan, the banned mentor of political Islam in Turkey, wielded over the party long before it was banned in late June.
The "modernists" have stressed the need to address a broader electorate instead of appealing only to pious voters with Erbakan-style Islamic rhetoric, which has often angered the strongly pro-secular elite led by the powerful military.
They criticized Virtue's failure, as the main opposition party, to put forward alternative solutions to Turkey's problems; and have advocated an overhaul of the country's ailing political system, seen to be at the core of widespread corruption, nepotism and recent economic woes, AFP said.
Among those expected to be on the Committee of Founders is Ibrahim Ozal, the son of Yusuf Bozkurt Ozal, brother of former president the late Turgut Ozal, who was also the founder and first leader of the Motherland Party (ANAP), said a Turkish newspaper, the Turkish Daily News, on Tuesday.
The party already has five members from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the True Path Party (DYP) and the Motherland Party (ANAP). The new party is expected to have more than 50 parliamentary deputies on board, said the paper.
Turkey's human rights record is a particularly sensitive issue as it attempts to join the European Union, BBC's online service said earlier.
On July 31st, the Strasbourg-based, European Court of Human Rights said in a ruling that Turkey had not violated article 11 of the European Convention by banning Welfare in January 1998 for anti-secular activities.
The court said Turkey had not violated the article on freedom of assembly and association since Welfare had declared its intention to introduce Islamic law, which was against the convention.
The court's ruling was condemned by Turkey's Islamic parties, who called it unfair and against European human rights norms.
The ruling showed that the "European Convention of Human Rights is valid only for certain countries," Anatolia news agency quoted Mehmet Bekaroglu, deputy chairman of the Saadet Party, as saying.
About 40 other Islamic parties were banned in the past 40 years in mainly Muslim Turkey, where a strictly secular regime is enforced.
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