1 POLITICO-RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE OF POLITICAL ISLAM IN TURKEY: THE PARTIES OF NATIONAL OUTLOOK Ahmet Yıldız * Introduction The precarious relationship between religion and political representation has been generating a great deal of political controversies and intellectual challenges in Turkey. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, Turkey experienced a transition to multi-party politics. Political parties started to attest more importance to the religious claims and interests within multi-party electoral system. As a consequence, religiously-oriented voters have been able to carve out a legitimate space for political representation in Turkey. The routes of “politics” and “prayer rug” have begun to intersect in the political fields and ballot boxes. Since Democrat Party (DP) (1946-1960), the religiously oriented voters have formed the backbone of the center-right parties. In the 1970’s, political arena was ripe enough to allow autonomy for the representation of the religious interests articulated first by the National Order Party (NOP) (1970-71) and later by the National Salvation Party (NSP) (1972-1980). NOP played a key role in the repoliticisation of Islam by enlarging the channels of political representation. Forming its political discourse on religious tenets, the Welfare Party (WP) (1983- 1998), the recrystallisation of the NSP under a different rubric, assumed the position of the political spokesman for the religious votes. It became the locus of the populist version of political Islam adopted to the formal democratic procedure. Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of the movement of the National Outlook 1 , has considered the WP as the political expression of the Turkish part of the umma i.e. global Muslim community. Ironically enough, the * Ph.D., Turkish Grand National Assembly Library Research Service. 1 For the National Outlook see Necmettin Erbakan, Milli Görüş (National Outlook) (Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 1975).