Islamist opposition leader says he will step down due to poor health

Temel Karamollaoğlu, leader of Turkey’s Islamist opposition Felicity Party (SP), announced in a live television interview on Friday that he would step down for health reasons.

Karamollaoğlu, who has been struggling with increasing medical problems, explained that his condition prevents him from properly fulfilling his duties.

“My health no longer allows me to adequately fulfill the duties of this office,” he said on TV5.

Although the party congress was originally scheduled for October, Karamollaoğlu hinted that an earlier date might be more suitable due to his health, suggesting June 30 as a possibility.

He said that while there are not yet any clear successors, the party would consider the opinion of its members before making a decision. Karamollaoğlu also made clear that he will not retire from politics completely but will support whoever succeeds him as party leader.

Two parties emerged following the closure of the Islamist Virtue Party (FP) by the Constitutional Court in 2001. One of them, founded by the reformist faction of the FP, was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), while the other was the SP.

The SP was established on July 20, 2001 by Necmettin Erbakan, Erdoğan’s former mentor, and Recai Kutan.

Erbakan, a charismatic engineer-turned-politician, founded a number of explicitly Islamist political parties from the 1970s onwards. These parties, often viewed with suspicion by Turkey’s secular establishment, were frequently banned by the courts or pressured by the military to disband.

The SP represents the continuation of the Millî Görüş (National Outlook) movement, an Islamist political philosophy in Turkey that emphasizes the integration of Sunni Islamic principles with Turkish governance.

The party has played a significant role in Turkish politics despite its relatively modest electoral success, often participating in elections with an emphasis on religious and national values.

In its early years, the SP struggled to cross the electoral threshold needed to enter the Turkish Parliament. During the 2002 general election, the party secured only 2.5 percent of the vote, falling short of the 10 percent threshold.

This pattern of falling below the threshold continued in subsequent elections, including the 2007 and 2011 general elections. However, the party remained an influential voice in Turkish politics, particularly among conservative and religious communities. It often highlighted issues such as social conservatism, anti-Zionism and skepticism towards European Union policies, aligning with the broader ideological framework of Millî Görüş.

The leadership of the SP has seen several changes since its inception. After Kutan, Necmettin Erbakan briefly reassumed the role of party leader in 2003 before resigning due to legal issues.

The party was subsequently led by a series of politicians including current parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmuş, who later left to form his own party, and then by Mustafa Kamalak.

The party’s current leader, Karamollaoğlu, took over in 2016. Under his leadership, the SP has participated in various electoral alliances and maintained its advocacy for a return to a parliamentary system, as opposed to the presidential system that was adopted in Turkey following a 2017 referendum.

Karamollaoğlu’s SP sustained a defeat in the recent local elections and won only 1.09 percent of the nationwide vote, comprising only one provincial municipality.

The SP had been a member of an opposition election alliance called the Table of Six and ran under the banner of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and gained 10 seats in parliament in the May 2023 general election from the CHP’s lists.

After joint opposition candidate and former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu lost the presidential election against incumbent President Erdoğan in the second round in May, calls for the leaders of the opposition alliance to resign grew louder.

Kılıçdaroğlu lost an internal party election last year to current CHP leader Özgür Özel, while Meral Akşener, chair of the nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party, was replaced by Müsavat Dervişoğlu after a party election last week. Karamollaoğlu would be the third party leader to leave leadership in the Table of Six.