regrouped under a new party—Refah—of which
Erbakan took control when his ban was lifted in
- The party grew steadily in strength, sweep-
ing the local elections of 1994 and gaining impor-
tant mayorships, including istanbUl and Ankara.
In the parliamentary elections of 1995, Refah won
21.4 percent of the vote, a plurality, pressing other
parties to join it to form a coalition. After much
political wrangling, Refah managed to form a gov-
ernment in 1996, with Erbakan as the country’s
first Islamist prime minister.
Refah’s success stemmed from its effective
appeal to a segment of the Sunni population,
which felt Turkey’s secular attitude had repressed
Islam, but also to its populist and anticorruption
discourse, and to its strong grass-roots organi-
zation, which distributed food and other basic
necessities to the poor. Erbakan sought closer
ties with countries such as iran and libya, and
it openly supported the religious brotherhoods,
which had been outlawed since 1925. These and
other reform measures met with opposition from
the military and the secular media, and, in 1997,
under heavy pressure from the military, Erbakan
resigned as prime minister. The Refah Party was
closed in 1998, and Erbakan was again banned
from politics.
Some Refah members resurfaced in the Fazilet
(Virtue) Party, with a more Western orientation,
focusing on democracy, civil rights, and entrance
into the European Union, but, despite its more
moderate approach, Fazilet also ran into problems
with the secularist forces, especially over the issue
of Women wearing headscarves. In 2001 Fazilet
was also closed down, after which a split occurred
in its ranks. The younger, more moderate faction
formed the AKP (Justice and Development Party).
Refah Party members have subsequently worked
with the Fazilet (Virtue) Party and the AKP (Jus-
tice and Development) Party, the latter of which
won a majority of parliamentary seats in the 2002
election, and it was able to form a government
with Recep Tayyip Erdogan (b. 1954) as prime
minister.
See also government, islamic; hUman rights;
islamism; politics and islam; secUlarism.Mark SoileauFurther reading: Marvine Howe, Turkey Today: A Nation
Divided over Islam’s Revival (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 2000); David Shankland, Islam and Society in
Turkey (Huntingdon, U.K.: Eothen Press, 1999).refugees
Civilians who are forced to flee their homes to
escape violence or persecution are known as refu-
gees. Several major refugee migrations are known
in the history of Islam before the modern era.
These include the flight of Muslims to syria and
egypt in the west and india in the east to escape
the onslaught of the Mongol armies that invaded
the Middle East in the 13th century, and again in
the 14th and 15th centuries. These refugees con-
tributed significantly to religious, intellectual, and
social life in the countries where they made their
new homes. Another significant refugee popula-
tion consisted of Jews and Muslims who were
driven out of Spain by the European Christian
armies of the Reconquista in the 14th and 15th
centuries. Most of these refugees settled in North
Africa, egypt, and lands in the east Mediterra-
nean basin. In the 19th century sizeable Muslim
refugee populations were created as a result of the
Crimean War (1853–56) and the British suppres-
sion of the Sepoy Rebellion in northern India in
1857.
Like many other parts of the world, lands with
sizeable Muslim populations in the Middle East
and South Asia witnessed massive population
displacements in the 20th century, resulting in the
creation of millions of refugees and significant dis-
ruptions to economic, social, political, religious,
and personal networks. Ottoman massacres of
Armenian Christians in the early part of the cen-
tury forced survivors of that minority community
to flee to Syria, lebanon, palestine, and Egypt.
In 1947 the partition of India led to unparalleledrefugees 583 J