Zekeriya Yapıcıoğlu (born 1966;Batman) is a Kurdish Turkish 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 southeastern 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 | 27,537 | 3.4% | Not elected |
General elections,2018 | Diyarbakır | 35,239 | 4.3% | Not elected |