If such policies sound odd to outsiders, it’s music to the ears of Aslan Kuytu, a hard-core nationalist who voted for the party in hopes that it would get tough on leftists, Kurds and Islamists–not to mention those who are “selling Turkey to foreign bankers.” Thickset and mustached, the 50-year-old Istanbul shopkeeper complains that the party has spent too much time toeing the line set by its bigger coalition partners in the run-up to the last elections. “We had a great chance to stand up for Turkish values,” says Kuytu. “Instead we’ve given up control of the country to the IMF, and the EU is bullying us into giving up Cyprus.”
He can probably look forward to a tougher line next time around, when many grass-roots supporters expect the nationalists’ anti-reform stance to pay off in the November elections. In a climate where few parties can muster more than 10 percent of the vote, and 40 percent of voters report themselves “undecided,” anything can happen.
If that were to include a second coming for the nationalists, few would be happier than Kuytu. Bigoted as he may sound, he is representative of a disconcertingly large number of Turks who are desperate for an end to an economic crisis that the current pro-EU government can’t seem to cure. During the 1970s, Kuytu looked on approvingly as Gray Wolves (ultra-nationalist vigilantes) beat up and shot leftist students in the name of Turkish national purity. Today he’s alarmed by talk of abolishing Turkey’s death penalty, and, like his party, he fears that changing laws that ban broadcasting or language instruction in Kurdish and other minority tongues will lead to the breakup of the republic.
Put that sentiment to a vote in one of the smoky, male-only teahouses that dot the commercial district of Eminonu, and you get near unanimity. “People are so sick of seeing Turkey pushed around, begging for money, having its policies dictated from abroad,” says a heavyset man named Turgut, a video-rental-shop owner. “We will stand up and be proud to be Turks.”
