The Virtue Party, Welfare's successor, now has 16 of the city's 61 parliamentary seats.
Then there is Merve Kavakci, a sleek, Texas-educated computer engineer, one of 17 female candidates running for parliament on the Islamist Virtue party's ticket.
He is solidly secular, which means he will be wary of giving too long a leash to the Islamic-minded Virtue party, even though it has backed his candidacy in parliament.
Mr Kutan, for his part, disclaims any ambition to lead Virtue after the next party congress.
Virtue, the Islamic party formed when its predecessor, Welfare, was banned in 1998 after being thrown out of office, has spotted that with a European arm around its shoulder it might be better able to insist, for instance, that females should be allowed, despite current laws, to wear headscarves in state-run schools and government offices.
The hallmark of the mid-western Democrats is a virtue usually scorned in their party's primaries: pragmatism.
But seriously, neither party has a monopoly on virtue.
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If they do, Abdullah Gul, a calm and popular Virtue deputy, may take up the new party's reins.
But to credit Mr Anwar himself with all these changes is to forget that, while he may have wanted to change things from the inside, he did not necessarily cover himself in virtue as he built his own career within the ruling party.
The fate of talented MPs determined to make a splash depends on several key factors: the status of their party within Parliament, their own status within the party, and their ability to convince colleagues of the virtue of their ideas.
Mr Kutan and other senior figures in the party owe their jobs to Mr Erbakan, but what about Virtue's 310, 000 members, 305, 000 of whom never joined Welfare, and 80-odd provincial party chiefs, all new appointments?
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