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Though it boasts having the most members, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has started a new drive to recruit more to its cause. The party determined target numbers for every 81 provinces to add more registered members to its more than 11.1 million supporters.
During the central executive and decision-making committee meeting of the party on Tuesday, the committee members, as well as government ministers, were handed out five membership forms each to promote the campaign and to recruit new members to the party.
The party marked its 24th year in the political scene this year. Though the political landscape in the year it was founded propelled the AK Party to 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 so-called Kurdish question and a headscarf ban. Along the way, it faced lawsuits for its closure and several coup attempts. Its chair, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, himself was barred from politics after he was imprisoned for 10 months for reciting a poem deemed offensive to the country’s ruling elite, which toppled a coalition government of Erdoğan’s political mentor Necmettin Erbakan in 1997.
The AK Party recently wrapped up a campaign of nationwide gatherings entitled “Century of Türkiye meetings,” where the party’s senior figures and ministers attended public rallies both to promote the party’s policies and explain the terror-free Türkiye initiative launched by government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
