The leader of Turkey’s largest Islamist party rattled off what he believes to be the failures of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government: a high unemployment rate, a widening trade deficit, a chaotic foreign policy, a stalled European Union membership application and a state of emergency since the failed 2016 coup – all of which have damaged fundamental rights and freedoms.



Temel Karamollaoğlu, the Manchester-educated head of the Saadet (Felicity) party, says it is for these reasons and more that he is running for president. He has also allied with staunch secularists in the race for parliament – a coalition that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

Two weeks before presidential and parliamentary elections, the race is unexpectedly tightening.

Although Erdoğan remains the most powerful and popular politician in Turkey, his opponents have performed exceptionally well in opinion polls, with recent ones suggesting the legislative hold of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) could be broken.

In an environment of declining freedom of expression and purges of dissidents as well as growing displays of public piety in a country where secularism is enshrined in its founding principles, a consistent voice of opposition has emerged from an unlikely quarter.

Islamists, who were once ideological allies of the president, have joined the alliance trying to weaken his hold on power.

“The policies that Erdoğan or his government are following do not help Turkey stand up on her own feet in almost all aspects and policies, whether economic or foreign policies,” Karamollaoğlu told the Guardian. “His method of approach, the discourse, causes polarisation in Turkey. He is in great extent disrespectful to the upholding of law.”



Karamollaoğlu’s party was once led by Necmettin Erbakan, the father of Turkey’s modern political Islamist movement, one-time prime minister and former mentor of Erdoğan.

Erdoğan and other key figures in the movement, who were seen as more reform-minded at the time, split off to form the AKP, which has ruled Turkey since 2002.

Turkey’s president likes to portray himself as the global defender of Islam and has sought to position himself as a champion of Muslim causes and a leader of a solidarity movement for the oppressed faithful around the world, another stance that plays well with conservative voters.

Karamollaoğlu said his party’s vision for Turkey is one of UK-style secularism in which religion and the state can co-exist peaceably, a self-sufficient economy and a foreign policy based on dialogue and diplomacy, with closer ties to Muslim nations. He wants to abandon the pursuit of EU membership in favour of a special status agreement, as well as the strategic alliance with the US that is already frayed under Erdoğan.

For the elections, the Felicity party has entered an alliance with the main secular opposition bloc, the Republican People’s party (CHP). The Islamists and secularists make for unlikely bedfellows, united by their opposition to the president and his ruling party, despite their bitter ideological disparity.

“We don’t have the same policies or the same understanding of governance, in economics, in foreign policy,” Karamollaoğlu said. “But we have certain principles we agreed, [like] separation of government and the judiciary … press freedom, lifting of the state of emergency.”

The oddity of the pairing belies the broader campaign to draw away voters from Erdoğan’s religiously conservative base, which has reliably voted for him.

His strongest rivals in the presidential race are making implicit appeals to religious voters by signalling their own piety. Meral Aksener, the leader of a new nationalist party, points out that she performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and, though she does not wear the veil, she regularly performs daily prayers. Muharrem Ince, the CHP’s candidate, attends Friday prayers.

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Karamollaoğlu’s candidacy and vociferous opposition to the AKP’s policies also blurs the traditional dividing lines of Turkish politics, and marks a public disavowal of the idea that Erdoğan is the only legitimate champion of the pious.

Religious voters often point to Erdoğan’s personal piety as a factor in his appeal, as well as his support for Islamist causes like the headscarf, which under the ruling AKP was allowed in universities and state institutions.

To many conservative voters, Erdoğan’s rise signalled that public displays of faith had become mainstream, after decades of the vilification of religion and its adherents. It was a repudiation of the “White Turks”, the secular elite who controlled the military and the state’s bureaucracy and looked down on their religious countrymen as ignorant and poor.

Distrust will continue to pose a challenge to opposition parties who want to draw in conservatives in sufficient numbers to tip the scales.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meral Aksener, the leader of a new nationalist party in Turkey. Photograph: Huseyin Aldemir/Reuters

They hope, for example, that conservative voters in Kurdish areas who have long voted for the AKP will vote for other parties this time around, due to a combination of Erdoğan’s electoral alliance with the nationalists, Turkey’s military operations against Kurdish militias in Syria, and the sweeping crackdown on dissident Kurds, as well as the failed promise of the inclusive vision of Turkey once espoused by Erdoğan’s AKP.

“We are witnessing a fracturing of the [AKP] base,” said Huda Kaya, an MP with the Kurdish issue-oriented People’s Democratic party (HDP), who campaigned for the right to wear the headscarf and previously supported the AKP.

“The most distinct and vivid words in our memory is when Erdoğan said all 80 million [people in Turkey] are my fellow citizens if they vote for me or not,” she said. “We kept our hopes on this being the truth … but all the promises, the equality, rights and freedom, the position of Kurdish society is nothing near what was promised.”