Blame Europe for jilting its lover. Even moderate Turks were galled by the European Union’s refusal to discuss membership with Turkey last year. Earlier this year, Italy refused to turn over to Turkey Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group; that triggered anti-European riots on the main streets of Istanbul. In recent months, funerals of Turkish soldiers or civilians killed during clashes with the PKK have turned into emotional demonstrations in favor of Turkish unity. MHP supporters have often organized these demonstrations.
MHP’s leader, economist Devlet Bahceli, has tried to position himself as a moderate. But the MHP has a tradition of violence. The party was founded in the 1960s by Alparslan Turkes, an army colonel who had hopes of reclaiming Turkey’s lost empire. In the 1970s, the party’s young paramilitary forces, the Gray Wolves, staged demonstrations on streets and university campuses. About 5,000 people were killed, and the violence eventually led to a military coup in 1980.
Bahceli closed down the Gray Wolves training centers when he took over the party in 1997. But the MHP flag still carries the three crescents of an Ottoman war banner, and its nationalist music and rhetoric die hard. Young members still identify themselves with hand signs that resemble the head of a wolf. And during election victory celebrations, many chanted slogans like, “Kosovo, stand by, we are coming.”
To succeed, the MHP must control radical elements within the party. Even if it can, the future of Turkey’s relations with Europe doesn’t look bright. Neither the DSP nor the MHP seems terribly interested in developing warmer relations with Greece. Both parties are reluctant to discuss Turkey’s poor human-rights record, and are piqued by foreign criticism on the topic Bahceli takes a particularly tough stance on the Kurds. “There is no Kurdish problem in Turkey,” he says. “The problem is terrorism.”
Both parties favor Turkey’s entry to the EU. But the MHP, at least, is covering all its bases. Bahceli has been developing a “Eurasia project” to strengthen ties with Turkic republics in Central Asia, as well as the Balkans and the Mideast.
The pan-Turkism envisioned by the MHP may be a pipe dream. But Turkey’s new nationalism is not. The alliance between the MHP and the DSP looks set to be the most stable and cohesive government Turkey has had in four years. Europeans had better get used to it.
