Justice Party (Turkey, 2015)

The Justice Party (

The modern Justice Party was established by Vecdet Öz, a former academician and public health official in the Turkish government.^[8] Öz had previously contested the 2009 Turkish local elections as a mayoral candidate for the CHP in the Istanbul district of Beylikdüzü, but ultimately narrowly lost the race to Yusuf Uzun, the candidate of the AKP. Five years later, in the 2014 local elections, the Beylikdüzü mayoralty was won by Ekrem İmamoğlu, who in 2019 became mayor of the greater Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and emerged as a prominent opposition profile. After having been a member of the CHP since 2009, Öz ultimately broke with the party and established the Justice Party as a moderate Kemalist party of the centre-right. It occupies roughly the same ideological space as the modern Democrat Party, and both of these parties claim the legacy of the original Justice Party of Süleyman Demirel. The party has positioned itself as an opposition party against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and it called for a "no" vote in the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum arranged by his ruling AKP and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, which sought to introduce an executive presidential system.^[9] The referendum ultimately passed, and in the snap 2018 presidential elections that followed, Öz sought to compete as an opposition candidate. However, he failed to collect the 100,000 signatures necessary to lodge a presidential candidacy, securing only 3,030 signatures.^[10]

Recent activities

After the 2018 elections, the Justice Party remained a minor political force in Turkey, and the party's electoral activities were largely limited to endorsements of candidates from larger parties. In the run-up to the 2023 general elections, however, the party announced that it would join the Ancestral Alliance, a coalition of small and largely nationalist political parties such as the Victory Party of Ümit Özdağ, a former MHP and Good Party member known for his anti-immigration views. For the presidential election, the alliance nominated Sinan Oğan, who succeeded in collecting the 100,000 signatures required to launch a candidacy. Meanwhile, the Justice Party ran in the parliamentary election with its own list, winning just 0.2% of the vote. However, Oğan secured over 5% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, above expectations and enough to force the election to a second round. In the runoff, Oğan endorsed the incumbent President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whilst both the Justice Party and the Victory Party instead endorsed his challenger, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the CHP.^[11]

Election results

Parliamentary elections

Grand National Assembly of Turkey

Election	Votes		Seats		Role
	#	%	#	±
2018	Did not run		0 / 600	New	in opposition
2023	108,713	0.2	0 / 600	0	in opposition

Presidential elections

President of Turkey

Election	Candidate	Votes (round 1)		Votes (round 2)		Result
		#	%	#	%
2018	Did not run
2023	Sinan Oğan[a]	2,831,239	5.2

References