EU dreams were behind Erdogan-Erbakan rifts, Ali says

Director of the Middle East Center for Studies in Paris (CEMO), Abdel Rahim Ali, said Friday that Necmettin Erbakan had been paving the road for political Islam to be in control in Turkey since founding the Milli Gorus movement.

In 1970, he added, Erbakan founded the National Order Party. However, the party was dissolved a year later.

He added at a seminar by CEMO in Paris, titled “Turkish foreign policies and their disastrous consequences on Europe”, that a short time later, Erbakan formed the National Salvation Party.

This party was dissolved too in 1980 when the Turkish army took over, he said.

He added that Erbakan did not despair. In 1983, he founded the Welfare Party, Ali said.

He noted that the Turkish Constitutional Court banned this party because it violated the separation instituted in the constitution between religion and state.

Some of the members of the Welfare Party founded the Virtue Party, in late 1997, exactly when Erbakan, Erdogan and Gul were banned from politics. Ali said. This party was barred by the Constitutional Court in 2001.

He said divisions were clear between Erbakan, on one hand, and Erdogan and Gul, on the other.

He noted that this amounted to a generational divide, especially when the three were allowed to go back to politics.

Erbakan founded and headed the Felicity Party in 2001, Ali said. Erdogan and Gul founded the Justice and Development Party in the same year, he added.

He noted that Erbakan died in 2011, but the manifesto he wrote in the 1960s continued to be the ideological reference for the Justice and Development Party, later headed by Erdogan.

Milli Gorus also derives its ideology from the same manifesto, Ali said. Apart from Europe, the movement took root and grew in the United States and Australia, he added.

Ali revealed that both Erdogan and Gul quit Milli Gorus against the background of disputes on the financial gains of the movement in Europe.

In Germany alone, the moment earned a million Euros every month, he said.

Attending the seminar was a large host of researchers and experts. They included Ahmed Youssef Executive Director of CEMO, Roland Lombardi, Joachim Veliocas, Pierre Berthelot, Garen Shnorhokian. Several Middle East specialists from Europe also attended the seminar, along with a large number of Arab and French journalists.