Even Chief of Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ unequivocally stated a few days ago that the wrongdoing by the military officers at the hospital was indefensible.While the mood in the public sphere is evident, we should thank God that Mr. Durmuş acted with honesty and transparency and gave us an indication of what his party’s elite actually think about freedoms in this country. I think, in the future, the MHP should be closely monitored as its pre-1980 history especially suggests that it is not just any other party.
The MHP was established by the late retired Col. Alparslan Türkeş, who was one the 38 junior officers that staged the coup on May 27, 1960, which ended with bloodshed and the execution of democratically elected Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. It was Türkeş’s voice that the Turkish nation heard first thing in the morning on that date, as he announced on the radio that the military had intervened in the government but would be loyal to NATO (ergo the US), etc. After a while, Türkeş and 13 of his friends in the junta were expelled from the group and an objective source (Erik-Jan Zürcher) writes that they were evicted because of their radical and excessive views, such as not returning to democracy for a few more decades so that the society would be “redesigned” in the line of Mustafa Kemal’s revolution. This was of course something that the US would not tolerate; all it wanted was to make sure that Menderes would not approach its archenemy, the Soviet Union, but a dictatorship in NATO would be too much. Only the communists would have such horrific regimes! Toppling the government and hanging democratically elected politicians was more than enough, at least within NATO, anyway.
Col. Turkeş was posted to India as Turkey’s ambassador and after returning to Turkey, he almost completely transformed his ideology as he decided to become a politician (a genuine and legal one this time). The “new” Türkeş took up the flag of nationalism in the country and tried to eliminate Nihal Atsız’s negative nationalism -- in the Nursian terminology -- which is racist, exclusivist, intolerant and irreligious or Shamanist at best. Türkeş’s nationalism was more people and Islam friendly, and he was tolerant to a certain extent, although he became very upset on a TV program when one of the participants said that Turkey was a mosaic.
After Türkeş departed, the party’s negative nationalists became stronger, but what we know is that a fight is going on between different factions within the party. We sense that there are several members of the elite within the party that would be pleased with Atsız’s negative nationalism and they believe that Islam should be distanced from the party’s ideology. They do not talk openly and honestly (and that is why I commend Durmuş for his transparency) so we do not know their reasons for this. They may think that if they were to stay close to Islamic ideals, there already exists a genuine party that would appeal to such voters.
Although, it is a non-Islamist party, not an Islamist or even post-Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) several practicing Muslim politicians are more attractive to observant Muslims. The second reason could be that Islam will make it a soft touch against the Kurdish problem and even the European Union project, as it is a religion of pluralism, anti-racism, tolerance, inclusivity and respect for diversity. They may even be thinking that these dangerous times are not for politician Türkeş’s ideology but that only junta member Col. Türkeş’s (the old Türkeş) ideas can save the nation today. I do not know what it is that’s crossing their minds, but by looking at their attitudes, rhetoric and stance on the Kurdish issue, the new constitution and the EU debates, it is easy to see that Atsız’s spirit combined with the old Türkeş’s proposed social engineering techniques are chasing away the new Türkeş’s heritage.
To see for yourself, just listen to Devlet Bahçeli in Parliament on any Tuesday.
