North ruling party changes name – slightly

The YDP, one of the three political parties which make up the north’s ruling coalition, has changed its name following a meeting of its party congress.

The party’s name has been changed from the “Yeniden Dogus Partisi”, Turkish for the “rebirth party”, to the “Yeni Dogus Partisi”, Turkish for the “new birth party”. Its commonly used abbreviation, “YDP”, will thus remain unchanged.

The new name is now the same as that of the original YDP, a party which was founded in the 1980s to represent the north’s growing Turkish settler population at the time.

That party was a minor partner in a ruling coalition with the UBP, one of the two parties with which the modern YDP currently shares power, between 1986 and 1988 under then ‘prime minister’ Dervish Eroglu.

Its founder Aytac Besesler, born in the town of Kirklareli near Turkey’s border with Bulgaria, served in that coalition as ‘agriculture minister’.

That party merged with the DP, the other party with which the modern YDP shares power, in 1993, before the modern YDP split off from the DP in 2016.

Since then, the party has been led by Erhan Arikli, himself born in Turkey. He was born in the town of Ardahan, in the country’s far northeast, near its border with Georgia.