Monday 22 March 2010

Time: 6.30pm -8.00pm

Venue: Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Room , Houses of Parliament, London SW1A 0AA (use Cromwell Green Visitors' Entrance)

Speaker:

• Mustafa Sarigül, Leader of Turkey's Movement for Change (TDH) and Mayor of Sisli Municipality

Chair

• Adam Hug, Policy Director, Foreign Policy Centre

The Foreign Policy Centre hosted Mustafa Sarigül, leader of Turkey's Movement for Change, that describes itself as a new progressive political force in the centre-ground of Turkish politics.

Since its breakthrough victory in 2002, the AKP party of Prime Minister Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics, leaving the old guard parties struggling to find an effective response. Despite its modest gains in last year's local elections, the main opposition party, the Kemalist CHP party, under the veteran leadership of Denis Baykal, is struggling to convince the Turkish public that it could form a plausible alternative government. It is in this environment that Mustafa Sarigül's Turkish Movement for Change is being formed and it has the potential to reach out across the political spectrum.

Sarigül started his political career as Turkey's youngest Parliamentarian in 1987 as part of the CHP. In 1999 he left Parliament to become mayor of Istanbul's central Sisli district, a post he still holds. Blocked from the CHP Presidency in a close-fought internal battle with the incumbent Baykal in 2004, this year he has founded a new party, backed by former members of both the CHP and AKP and high profile figures such as Hikmet Çetin and Faruk Logogu.

Download Speech by Mustafa Sarýgül to the Foreign Policy Centre (350 kilobyte PDF; need help viewing PDFs?)