The MHP’s leading figures and members were one of the groups most negatively affected by the Sept. 12, 1980, military coup, and the trial of the coup’s perpetrators would be possible if the reform package is approved. The MHP’s attitude towards the reforms as well as the party’s obsession with a nationalist discourse without making any contribution to the country’s progress has led many to have a pessimistic vision for its future.The Star daily’s Şamil Tayyar is one of those who could not understand the opposition of the MHP to the reform package from the very first day the reforms were put on Turkey’s agenda. “When I take a look at the MHP’s reactions and rallies, the only reasoning I can find is the fact that the reforms were approved in Parliament with a majority of Justice and Development Party [AK Party] votes. The party’s propaganda is well known; it is based on terrorism and nationalism,” explains Tayyar. With regard to the MHP calling on the public to say “no to the AK Party’s constitution,” Tayyar says it would have been ideal if the package had been approved with a greater consensus in Parliament; however, the opposition parties opted to not make any contribution to the reform process. “Theirs was a political approach, so they now don’t have the right to label the reforms the ‘AK Party Constitution’,” he argues. Tayyar believes because of the point that we are at today, the important thing is not by which party the amendments were proposed but the content of those amendments and what they contribute to the state and society.
The Yeni Şafak daily’s Taha Kıvanç focuses on a statement made by MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli to the Hürriyet daily asserting that “there could be a boom in the number of ‘no’ votes in the referendum.” Kıvanç thinks Bahçeli is very mistaken in thinking this. He recalls how the MHP under Bahçeli failed to pass the 10 percent election threshold in the 2002 elections even as Bahçeli said during the campaign that there would be a boom in MHP votes when ballot boxes were opened. Kıvanç says the Turkish public has a habit of attending the rallies of the parties they do not support in order to see what other political party leaders are saying, so the attendance at “no” rallies should not deceive politicians.
According to the Sabah daily’s Hasan Bülent Kahraman, the MHP’s future does not look very promising and the party is very likely to fail passing the election threshold in the general elections in 2011. The reason he thinks so is because the party has no program or project for the future and is limited by a feudal and patriarchal mentality.
