User:Michaelasabbag/Welfare Party

Dissolution of the Welfare Party
The Welfare Party came into the political sphere at a time when the impoverished public was discontented with the current government. Relying on Islamic rhetoric, they encouraged certain aspects of sharia law. Turkey, as a secular state, took issue with their religious narrative. Article 2.1 of the Turkish Constitution states that Turkey is a “democratic, secular, and social state.” Refah’s theocentric policy and speeches violated this commitment to secularism. On January 16, 1998, the Constitutional Court dissolved the Welfare Party because it had become a “center of activities against the principle of secularism.”

The Welfare Party then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), stating that the Turkish Supreme Court violated Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights that protects assembly and association. Refah also complained that its rights protected in Articles 9, 10, 14, 17, and 18 of the Convention and Articles 1 and 3 of Protocol No. 1 had been violated.

Paragraph 2 of Article 11 states that if free speech rights are limited, and both parties agreed that they had been, it must be “necessary in a democratic society.” The court found that Article 9, which protects freedom of religion, did not protect the Welfare Party from the fact that their policies went directly against the Turkish Constitution. They explained that a political party may campaign for a change in the constitution under two regulations: the campaigning must be done in a democratic and legal manner, and that the change itself must protect fundamental democratic principles. The court concluded that the Welfare Party’s political agenda did not uphold these two standards. The Welfare Party’s religious roots were considered to be detrimental to the protection of democracy.

The Welfare Party’s ban was the first in a number of party bans in Turkey due to religious circumstances. Turkey’s commitment to progress, unity, and democracy in its early years meant that they often dismantled organizations that threatened any of these three pillars. Therefore, any separatist or generally revolutionary party threatened Turkish politics and was banned in the Constitutional Court and was deemed an illegal party. Turkey’s current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was originally a member of the Welfare Party, and he used his status as a Islamist leader to garner support for his current party, the Justice and Development Party. The string of party bans made way for the Justice and Development Party to gain religious control.