National Agenda : Muslim Party Profits From Discontent : By opposing corruption, Turkey’s Welfare Party is emerging as a serious contender for national power.

“Ankara is in safe hands,” says a slickly produced poster of a doctor examining a young patient. What is remarkable is that the doctor is a woman, the patient is a blonde girl, and the poster sponsor is a pro-Islamic political party that is shaking the secular roots of a crossroads Muslim democracy that straddles Europe and Asia.

The Welfare Party--Refah, the Turks call it--has controlled City Hall here in the nation’s capital on the Anatolian plateau for the last six months. In Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, the new mayor is Refah, and so are the leaders of about 400 municipalities big and small across the country. They may be the harbinger of big social and political changes to come in Turkey: Refah calls itself a democratic Muslim party, but not everybody is convinced.

Once, Refah was an Islamic outpost on the fringe of Turkish politics. Now, profiting from popular discontent against parties that have directed breakneck modernization at the price of corruption and high inflation, Refah is a serious contender for national power.

A Mr. Clean party, Refah was the clear favorite in parliamentary by-elections scheduled for Dec. 4. With Refah expected to win as many as 18 of 22 seats, Prime Minister Tansu Cillert last week canceled the vote after Turkey’s constitutional court sided with Refah in demanding updated electoral lists to include hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes by fighting between Kurdish guerrillas and security forces in southeast Turkey. The government was sent into crisis over when, or even whether, to reschedule the elections.

Party strategists figured Refah might have won 18 of 22 seats at stake, and would have demanded that Ciller call a national elections early, in 1995. But even if Ciller hangs on until 1996, Refah could be a strong runner for government, by itself, or as a coalition partner with system-changing ambitions.

Promoted by full-time cadre-recruiters, Refah is emerging as the party of the underclass, with strong appeal to the millions of immigrants from the conservative countryside whose slums ring consumer-oriented cities across the nation. Radio and television stations, backed by pious Muslims, sell the Islamic message in a changing society.

In city streets, new minarets reach for the sky, and women with covered heads are a familiar sight. They coexist with yuppie bars, sidewalk cafes, soft porn TV and a national sense of western-ness. Perhaps 99% of Turks are Muslim, but in this most open of Islamic nations, many practice their faith with the same relaxed air of Italians sporadically proclaiming Catholicism.

Now along comes Refah, which plays by Turkey’s democratic rules but asserts its predilection for Muslim principles. Forbidden by Turkish’s secular constitution to call for a Muslim state, Refah instead demands constitutional reform to free Muslim activism from restraints installed in the 1920s by secularist Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish republic.

Turks appear to be turning to Refah in a reflexive, anti-Establishment revolt of a sort familiar to voters in other countries where corruption involving major political figures and parties has become a major national scandal.

In Italy, for instance, outsider fringe parties--regional populists and neo-fascists--have profited greatly from popular revolt against corrupt politics and stagnant economics.

Refah, like the Italian neo-fascists, is seen by many as the suspect scion of anti-democratic roots. But new blood is pushing the party toward moderation and the secular political mainstream.

“They are smiling a lot now, but they will get rougher when their vote grows. Still, there is great resistance in Turkey to returning to ideas of the past,” said Mehmet A. Basman, an Ankara businessman with a vested interest in Turkish liberalism. Basman makes wine in a Muslim country where consumption is growing but some municipally owned restaurants in Refah-controlled cities ban sales of alcohol.

Refah is the creation of Necmettin Erbakan, 67, who founded the party a quarter of a century ago after splitting with the polished secularist Suleyman Demirel, now Turkey’s president.

“We represent the belief of the nation (Islam). Those who represent the imitators of the West are destroying the beliefs of the nation,” Erbakan said in a recent speech. “They have said throughout our honored history that we will unite with Europe, that they will make our laws; it will be better if they were ruling us. It is as if they want to obliterate us, but Refah intends to found a great Turkey again.”

Erbakan was the picture of moderation in a visit to Washington this fall, but Turkish reporters say that his speeches at home often have a nationalistic, anti-democratic, anti-West, anti-Semitic cant. His critics call Erbakan an opportunist who is exploiting Islam as a magnet for disgruntled have-nots.

“The majority of Refah votes come from people fed up with the system, the corruption, the unfulfilled promises. Now, for many, the only electoral alternative is Refah,” said Fehmi Koru, columnist of the pro-Islamic newspaper Zaman.

Analysts such as Koru note that Turkey has historically looked West, not East, and say Refah, which played a minor role in two coalitions in the 1970s, is best seen as a movement that is pro-Islamic but not fundamentalist.

“Refah would try to find solutions to everyday problems looking at the Koran and Sunni (Muslim) sources, but those who want a Turkey like Iran or Saudi are very few--2% if the polls are to be believed,” Koru said.

Refah mayors across the country tend to be modern professionals: Ankara Mayor Malih Gorcek is a journalist turned social reformer whose clean-government campaign literature last spring made no reference to Islam.

Inside Refah, young technocrats are shouldering aside hard-line old-timers in a generational change that is also bringing fresh air to a party accustomed to one-man rule under Erbakan.

Abdullah Gul, 44, one of two new Refah deputy chairmen, says the party has been damaged by an inaccurate fundamentalist image. Cities under Refah administration, he says, may be more religiously oriented than they were before--but they are also better, more honestly, run.

“In Europe, there are many Christian Democrats. Here, we are Muslim democrats,” Gul said.

Hasan Cemal, a senior columnist for the newspaper Sabah, believes that Refah has effectively been tamed within the political system.

“Some Islamic intellectuals really want pluralism but don’t talk about it because they see no way to carry it out. They’re a bit like the former Communists who didn’t dare criticize Moscow even when everybody saw that the system didn’t work,” Cemal said.