Having celebrated its 23rd foundational anniversary earlier this week, Türkiye’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is looking forward to an extensive infrastructural overhaul in the following year.
The party will kick start its serial congress at a Central Decision-Making and Administrative Committee meeting in Ankara on Sept. 3, according to a report by Fatma Göksü in the Turkish newspaper Sabah.
As opposed to holding a series of provincial congress meetings for a whole year, the party will instead host its major ordinary congress in February-March 2025 and conclude the meetings by spring next year, Sabah wrote.
In cities and districts with over 100,000 populations, the congress meetings will be more inclusive. Delegates will be consulted, central elections will be held in the morning and broader consultation meetings will be held in the afternoon.
The plan is to organize “Türkiye meetings” meant to be preparatory assemblies for provincial and district congresses.
Speaking at the 23rd-anniversary event earlier this week, the AK Party's chair, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the party was engaging in “sincere self-criticism” and “boldly working on our deficiencies without any hang-ups.”
“This congress period will not be just a window dressing but the prime ground for the comprehensive change our people expect from us,” he said.
He also urged those who “have lost their excitement” to “not stand in the way of serving our people.”
He will be attending the congress meetings in Istanbul and Ankara.
The AK Party, which boasts the largest number of members, more than 11 million according to last year’s figures, will commence congress meetings in small towns and later move to districts and provinces and conclude with a final congress, completing the party’s eighth ordinary congress process.
AK Party personnel will be revised and refreshed nationwide, while members will be in the field across all cities.
While the decisions on when to hold the congress meetings will be made on Sept. 3, the party began preparations for the said change after the March 31 local elections, when the party suffered its first major loss in the past two decades when it won successive general and local elections.
The AK Party won 380 city and district municipalities, while the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), declaring victory in 372 municipalities. The opposition, however, is deemed victorious for winning in cities with overwhelming support for the AK Party in the past elections. The AK Party still retains a comfortable majority in Parliament and Erdoğan, although faced with the first runoff in his political career, secured another four-year term last year.
After the vote, Erdoğan vowed to look inwards and conduct “necessary changes” in the party. He emphasized that they would not allow those seeking to advance their own political career and would focus on winning the hearts of “new names that will empower us.” Just this month, the party replaced four more provincial chairs.
The party is also looking to welcome more members in the coming period. Erdoğan instructed his aides in the party not to “rush” in admitting new members. He also urged them to filter applicants and accept only those willing to adhere to the principles and values of the party.
The AK Party sources say admissions may be available next October, as well.
Though the political landscape in the year it was founded propelled the AK Party into the spotlight, landmark steps by successive AK Party governments helped it to stay in power for more than two decades. Those include breaking the taboo on several issues such as the Kurdish question and a headscarf ban.
Along the way, it faced lawsuits for its closure and several coup attempts. Erdoğan himself was barred from politics after he was imprisoned for 10 months for reciting a poem deemed offensive for the country’s ruling elite, which toppled a coalition government of Erdoğan’s political mentor Necmettin Erbakan in 1997.
This ban only ended in 2003 and he became the second prime minister of the AK Party after a brief tenure by Abdullah Gül.
Since then, he has served either as prime minister or president and is credited with expanding his party’s support to the wider public through a string of reforms in public services.
