Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu | |
Term Start: | 3 June 2023 |
Constituency: | İstanbul (III) (2023) |
Office1: | Leader of the Free Cause Party |
Termstart1: | 6 June 2021 |
Predecessor1: | İshak Sağlam |
Term Start2: | 30 June 2013 |
Term End2: | 21 May 2018 |
Predecessor2: | Mehmet Hüseyin Yılmaz |
Successor2: | Mehmet Yavuz |
Birth Place: | Batman, Turkey |
Party: | Free Cause Party |
Alma Mater: | Ankara University, Law School |
Education: | Lawyer, politician |
Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu (born 1966; Batman) is a Turkish-Kurdish politician and lawyer who led the Kurdish Islamist Free Cause Party from June 2013 to May 2018 and again from June 2021 on.[1] [2]
Born in 1966 in the city of Batman in the eastern part of Turkey, he worked as a lawyer from 1990 to 2012 after finishing his education as a lawyer in Ankara. He co-founded the Free Cause Party in 2013 in an attempt to consolidate the conservative Kurdish vote.[3] Yapıcıoğlu had previously been a supporter of Kurdish Hezbollah and also stated that the cause of Hüda-Par was the continuation of that of Sheikh Said.[4]
Yapıcıoğlu is Anti-Darwinian and generally uses Islamic rhetoric in his speeches.[5] [6] Moreover, he is against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, anti-America[7] and also criticized the ruling Justice and Development Party's policies and their failure in bringing peace to Kurdish areas.[8]
Yapıcıoğlu ran unsuccessfully as an independent twice in 2015 and in 2018 in the district of Diyarbakır and received 3.4% and 4.3% of the vote share respectively.
Election | District | Votes[9] | % | Results |
---|---|---|---|---|
General elections, June 2015 | Diyarbakır | |||
General elections, 2018 | Diyarbakır | |||