Joining the Wolves Erdogan's Pact with
the Ultra-Nationalists
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is doing what he can to hold on to power – and
is following his right-wing extremist coalition partner back to the
confrontational style of politics the country saw in the 1990s. Opposition
activists are concerned for their safety.
By Sebnem Arsu, Maximilian Popp und Anna-Sophie
Schneider
12.04.2021, 17.48 Uhr
Bild
vergrößern
Ultra-nationalist football fans in Istanbul
Foto: SEDAT
SUNA / EPA-EFE
Turkish mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı
has spent decades terrorizing rivals and those holding different political
views than his own. As one of the leading figures of a right-wing extremist
group called the Grey Wolves, which has focused its ire in the past on
leftists, Kurds and Alawites, Çakıcı is thought to be responsible for at least
41 political murders. In 2004, a court sentenced him to 19 years in prison, in
part for having his ex-wife murdered in front of their son.
A lot of people breathed a sigh of
relief when he was locked up. One of the most dangerous enemies of Turkish
democracy had been removed from public life for an extended period.
Now, though, Çakıcı is back. Last
April, he was released from high-security Sincan Prison as part of an amnesty
related to the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, he has increasingly become a
voice in Turkish politics.
Power Shift
Shortly after his release, Çakıcı
visited his ally Devlet Bahçeli, head of the right-wing extremist party MHP and
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's coalition partner. In November, he issued a
death threat to opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. "Watch your
step," he wrote on Twitter. And when thousands of students took to the
streets of Istanbul at the beginning of the year to protest the appointment of
an Erdoğan confidant to the position of rector of the renowned Bosporus
University, he branded the demonstrators terrorists.
Çakıcı's newly expanded public
profile is the expression of a fundamental power shift in Turkey. For many
years, Erdoğan pursued a religious agenda. But following the 2016 putsch
attempt involving followers of the Islamist cleric Fethullah Gülen, he has turned
to the ultra-nationalists. Since the presidential and parliamentary elections
of 2018, he has governed in a coalition with Bahçeli's secular, right-wing
extremist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
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The party is the political arm of
the Grey Wolves. It may only attract around 7 percent support in political
surveys, but its importance has increased massively in recent months – as has
the influence of Grey Wolves veterans like Çakıcı. Whether it is a conflict
over natural gas with Greece, the fight against terrorism or Ankara's approach
to minorities, government policy is increasingly influenced by the MHP.
Just how extensive the influence of
the right-wing extremists has become could be seen in mid-March, when the chief
public prosecutor, at Bahçeli's insistence, submitted an application to the
country's highest court to ban Turkey's second-largest opposition party, the
left-wing, pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
Erdoğan has been consistent in his
efforts to avoid party bans. His own party, the Muslim-conservative Justice and
Development Party (AKP), was almost prohibited in 2008. Ultimately, though, he
succumbed to Bahçeli's pressure, say observers in Ankara. "Bahçeli has
taken the most powerful man in Turkey as his hostage," says Turkish
journalist Can Dündar. "Erdoğan carries the drum, but Bahçeli pounds out
the beat."
ANZEIGE
Arbeiten post Corona – Home-Office vs. Büro
Transformation am Arbeitsplatz. So könnte
die Zukunft aussehen!
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vergrößern
Devlet Bahçeli, head of the right-wing extremist Nationalist Movement Party
(MHP)
Foto: ADEM
ALTAN / AFP
Many Europeans see the Turkish
president as a kind of modern-day sultan, who can do whatever he likes in
Turkey. In fact, though, Erdoğan has never been strong enough to govern the
country on his own.
Early on in his tenure, Erdoğan
cooperated with the liberals, taking steps to prepare his country for accession
to the European Union and opening Turkey up to foreign investors. Later, he
formed a coalition with the Islamist Gülen movement, which shares Erdoğan's
disdain for the secular elite. Together, Erdoğan and Gülen locked away hundreds
of opposition activists, condemning them as terrorists in a series of show
trials. When the Gülen movement became too powerful, he tried to strike a
balance with the Kurds, with whom he introduced an historic peace process.
Following the success of the HDP in 2015 parliamentary elections, though, he
turned his back on them, too. The only partners left for him were the
ultra-nationalists.
Covert Ruler
Presidential confidantes report that
Erdoğan and Bahçeli actually can't stand each other. Erdoğan's roots are in the
Islamist Milli-Görüş movement, which was oppressed in the 1980s and '90s by
right-wing extremists and Kemalists in the state apparatus. He, himself, is
hardly a passionate nationalist, with the community of Muslims, the umma,
consistently more important to him than the nation. When he rose to power in
2003, he pledged to break with the right-wing extremist networks in the
military, police and judiciary, the so-called "deep state."
Now, though, the "deep
state" is more powerful than ever before. Because Erdoğan doesn't have
enough loyalists of his own, he replaced Gülen movement followers in the
judiciary, police and military with loyalists from the Grey Wolves following
the 2016 putsch attempt, says parliamentarian Mustafa Yeneroğlu, a former
member of the AKP leadership who has since switched allegiances to the
liberal-conservative Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA). "Erdoğan has
made precisely those powers that have fought against us for years into the
covert rulers of the country," he says.
The right-wing extremists are no
longer particularly shy about leveraging their grip on power. Those who dare
criticize the MHP are threatened or, like the opposition politician Selçuk
Özdağ, even attacked.
The deputy head of the
Mulism-conservative Future Party of former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu,
Özdağ had the temerity to point out inconsistencies in Bahçeli's political
platform. In January, he was attacked by several club-wielding men in front of
his home in Ankara, beaten so badly that he wound up in the hospital.
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Turkish mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı
Foto: Reuters
Photographer / REUTERS
Özdağ isn't the only government
critic who has been the victim of presumably right-wing attacks in recent
weeks. In early March, journalist Levent Gültekin was beaten by 25 men in front
of his Istanbul office after he referred to the MHP ideology on air as an
"illness."
According to Özdağ, the situation in
Turkey today is similar to how it was in the 1980s and '90s, when right-wing
extremist groups, especially the Grey Wolves, hunted down their opponents.
Thousands of leftists, Kurds and Alawites were murdered back then, frequently
at the behest of the state.
Erdoğan tolerates the right-wing
extremists. Even as tens of thousands of opposition activists have been
arrested in Turkey over the past several years, the attacks on parliamentarians
and journalists have gone unpunished. Mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı has also been
allowed to spread his message of hate with no consequences.
Erdoğan apparently can't afford to
offend the MHP. The Turkish economy is mired in crisis, with the coronavirus
pandemic having made the situation even worse. Meanwhile, Erdoğan's AKP has
slipped in the polls to just 30 percent. His re-election to the presidency is
entirely dependent on support from the right-wing extremists.
Back to the 1990s
And re-election is all that the
president cares about, with all of his other political goals coming second –
particularly reconciliation with the Kurds. At one point, Erdoğan granted more
rights to the Kurds than any Turkish president before him. He loosened the ban
on the Kurdish language and invested billions in the infrastructure of
southeastern Turkey, where the Kurds are in the majority. In 2013, he was on
the brink of finding a political solution to the conflict with the Kurdish
terrorist organization PKK.
Driven by the ultra-nationalists,
though, the president has now returned to the bellicose policies of the 1990s.
The former co-leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been in prison since
2016, along with thousands of other HDP members. More than 50 Kurdish mayors
were removed from office.
More on Turkey
With the move to ban the HDP,
Erdoğan and the right-wing extremist Bahçeli are taking the next step. They are
trying to push the entire Kurdish movement out of Turkish politics. "It is
our honorable duty to close the HDP on behalf of future generations so that
they cannot return under a different name," says Bahçeli. The
Constitutional Court may have sent the application back to state prosecutors
two weeks ago due to formal errors, but hardly anybody in Turkey doubts that
legal proceedings will be opened sooner or later.
The next presidential and
parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2023. Observers believe that Erdoğan
and Bahçeli could, though, call snap elections for as early as this fall in
order to avoid the possibility of further economic deterioration. Just three
days after prosecutors submitted their application for the ban of HDP, Erdoğan
fired the head of the Turkish central bank and decreed his country's withdrawal
from the Istanbul Convention, aimed at preventing violence against women.
Indeed, it looks as though Erdoğan is
again pursuing the same strategy that has brought him victory in past
elections: The radical polarization of Turkish society.
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