United by Erdoğan-2

More about the "People" bloc (Cumhur İttifak), the leader of which is the current president of the country, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

In the previous article about electoral alliances in Türkiye, we explained what the opposition coalition "Nation" consists of. Today we bring to your attention an analysis of the "People" bloc (Cumhur İttifak), the leader of which is the current president of the country, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The president heads one of the bloc's parties - the Party of Justice and Development, which still holds first place in the ratings. Now its indicator is within 30-35%.

Erdoğan's party won for the first time in 2002 with 34%. However, because only two parties passed the 10% barrier, it was able to obtain an almost constitutional majority in the Mejlis. After that, it won two more elections in 2007 and 2011, and each time its percentages increased. In the summer of 2015, with a result of 40%, the AKP failed to form a government for the first time, because it did not receive a majority in the parliament. Three more parties entered the Mejlis, but no coalition could be formed. During the coalition, several bloody terrorist attacks took place in the country, and against their background in the fall of 2015, the Justice and Development Party won the elections with a record 49%.

In 2018, 42% of the AKP barely retained power thanks to younger partners from the Nationalist Action Party. MHP is now the main partner of AKP. However, the rating of the nationalists is currently less than 7%, so even the sum of the ratings currently does not give them a majority in the future Mejlis.

The ruling coalition invited three more parties to its bloc.

The Great Unity Party emerged in 1993, breaking away from the nationalists. Its charismatic leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu was elected to the parliament 4 times. In 2009, he died in a mysterious plane crash. The helicopter crashed in the mountains, and help arrived only two days later. Without Yazıcıoğlu, the party was never able to run its candidates to the parliament. Its current leader, Mustafa Destıcı, entered the Mejlis in 2018 on Erdoğan's list, and in some municipalities in central Turkey, the party has several deputies and mayors of small towns.

New Welfare Party. The name is a reference to the Welfare Party, the first Islamic party that won the 1996 elections in Türkiye and formed a government led by its founder, Necmettin Erbakan. That government resigned under pressure from the military. The party was banned. And Erbakan later founded the Party of Happiness, which is currently in the opposition coalition "Nation". Instead, the late Erbakan's son - Fatih Erbakan - created the New Welfare Party a few years ago. The rating of the party is 1-2%. Erbakan Jr. wanted to nominate his candidacy for the presidency this year, but already after the start of the campaign he agreed with Erdoğan: the New Welfare Party goes under the roof of the Justice and Development Party. Several of its candidates will be given places in the passing part of the AKP. The New Welfare Party put forward a condition for Erdoğan - to cancel some provisions of the Criminal Code on domestic violence. We will remind you that two years ago, Erdoğan already withdrew Türkiye from the Istanbul Convention. He replied to the objections of the opposition that the internal laws of the country protect women much better. Now his small, but more pro-Islamic partners demand a complete rejection of encroachments on a man's right "to raise a woman at his discretion according to the rules of religion."

The most unexpected partner of the government in the elections is HÜDA PAR (Free Cause party). It emerged in 2012, and its leaders de facto live in the Southeast in Bingyol and Batman.

The party consists exclusively of Kurds but is a bitter enemy of the popular pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democracy Party. HDP presents itself as a left-wing secular party that protects the rights of Kurds, national minorities, women, trade unions, and LGBT+.

Whereas HÜDA PAR emphasizes that it is an Islamic party, most of its current leaders are associated with the Kurdish Hezbollah (not to be confused with the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah). The Kurdish Hezbollah was active in the 1990s and is responsible for hundreds of political murders. Turkish authorities wiped out Kurdish Hezbollah in the early 2000s. However, most local analysts consider HÜDA PAR to be the political banner of former Kurdish Hezbollah terrorists. The party does not have serious support even in the Kurdish regions, but its strong side lies in the fact that the party assets consist of several thousand burly men who are good with weapons.

All these small partners of the ruling party are united by political Islam, Euroscepticism, and radically negative views on the secular system of Türkiye.