The Welfare Party, Turkish Nationalism and Its Vision of a New World Order

Thanks primarily to the dedicated work of the core group of its supporters, the Welfare Party (WP) managed to become the most important Islamist group in Turkey in mid-1990s and tried to give its color to the rising Islamism. This showed that in recent decades, an important part of Turkish society came to see certain versions of Islamism as a solution to their problems. The WP strongly contributed to articulation of a broad Islamist discourse that was very critical of the path that Turkish modernization took under the rule of the secular elite. In other words, the WP elite had a distinct understanding of the modern concepts brought about by the Turkish modernization project.