Justice and Development Party (AKP)

The Turk­ish Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (Turk­ish: Adalet ve Kalkın­ma Par­tisi; AKP) is the cur­rent rul­ing par­ty in Turkey led by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The par­ty was found­ed in 2001 by a num­ber of politi­cians from Islamist polit­i­cal par­ties which were banned for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar order, pro­claim­ing them­selves as prac­tic­ing “con­ser­v­a­tive democ­ra­cy” and reject­ing the Islamist label. The par­ty nar­row­ly sur­vived an attempt to close it via the courts for vio­lat­ing Turkey’s sec­u­lar­ism laws for its lift­ing of a ban on head­scarves at uni­ver­si­ties. Fol­low­ing this, the AKP passed con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments weak­en­ing the inde­pen­dence of the mil­i­tary and judi­cia­ry, both of which had threat­ened the AKP in defense of sec­u­lar­ism. The AKP has close ties with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oper­ates abroad with rep­re­sen­ta­tive offices in Europe, notably in Bel­gium, and has announced intent to open them in oth­er west­ern countries.