Türkiye's ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is celebrating the 21st anniversary of its founding, a journey marked by resounding election wins.
Founded on Aug. 14, 2001, the party burst onto the political scene under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became prime minister in 2003 and has served as president since 2014.
The AK Party's rise gained momentum on Nov. 3, 2002, just one year after its foundation, as it achieved enormous success in its first general elections, garnering 34.3% of the vote and earning 363 seats in Parliament.
Since then, the party has participated in six general elections – in 2002, 2007, 2011 and June 2015, and the snap elections of November 2015 and 2018 – and won them all.
As a result, in the last two decades, two presidents and four prime ministers were elected from the AK Party. Despite having a successful record in elections with a strong group of leaders, the 21-year journey of the party has had its fair share of struggles.
On July 15, 2016, the AK Party had to overcome arguably one of its biggest challenges when the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) organized a bloody coup attempt. Killing 251 people, the attempt was doomed to fail as the public flooded the streets to defend the government.
Following the coup attempt, the country began transitioning to the presidential system. Turkish voters narrowly endorsed an executive presidency in the April 16, 2017 referendum with 51.4% of the votes. The official transition to the new system took place when Erdoğan took the oath in Parliament as president after the June 24, 2018, general elections, in which he won 52.6% of the votes.
Türkiye also approved a package of constitutional reforms in 2010 under the government of then-Prime Minister Erdoğan in a referendum on the 30th anniversary of a coup that brought the military to power.
Türkiye's next elections are set for 2023.
The elections next year are "critical," Erdoğan said in a letter to party founders and members for the 21st anniversary.
"We are determined to bring the AK Party, which has won at the ballot box 15 times since its establishment, to victory again in the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held in 2023," he said.
The AK Party will celebrate the anniversary with a ceremony to be held in the capital Ankara on Monday. Posters with the slogan "We became one, we became 21," to mark the event, have started to be hung on the streets of the capital. Some 3,000 guests are expected to attend the ceremony.