ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Following the inconclusive general elections in June 2015 which led to the second round of polls in November, an old pattern of relations emerged. This was between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its clear Islamist approach in Turkish politics, and the opposition and far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), that although controversial, has increasingly been regarded as normal by supporters of both political camps. This new relation meant that nearly 50 percent of the MHP voters in June decided to support the AKP in November because of the new ties. “After the 1980 coup, the imprisoned MHP leader Alparslan Turkes famously announced that ‘while we are in prison, our ideas are in power,’” says professor Ahmed Uzer, a political scientist at the Mercin University. “It certainly is true even now, when the MHP is in opposition but its politics are very much practiced by the ruling AKP,” he believes. Nevertheless, the almost fascist MHP of the 1970s was considered a tough opponent of the National Solvation Party (MSP) which is virtually the mother of all Islamist movements in Turkey, including the AKP. So, historically seen, it is quite astonishing that the MHP lost 34 of its parliament seats to the AKP in just five months last year. Of course, a declaration of ‘a total war’ against the Kurdish guerrillas was required in return for the MHP’s favor. Add to that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s by now, infamous declaration that “it is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood,” referring to both the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). “I think what the MHP couldn’t have done by itself, even if it was in power, it managed to do through the AKP, and that is of course the extraordinary military actions against the PKK guerrillas,” Uzer explains. Uzer believes the AKP quickly replaced the expected Kurdish support for Erdogan’s political ambitions with the support from the MHP voters. And Erdogan, Uzer says, could now at least count on MHP support for his plans to increase presidential powers. The president will most probably continue to flirt with the MHP’s embattled leader Devlet Bahceli as long as the AKP needs additional votes to remain at the top of the political hierarchy, says Arezu Yilmaz, a political scientist. It has been part of Erdogan’s pragmatic charm for the past 13 years, Yilmaz believes. Between 2003 and 2007, she says, Erdogan managed to attract many liberals and Kurdish voters to the AKP camp and also neared the gap between European Union standards of human rights and those in Turkey. The outcome was that AKP won several elections in the country. The new pact, however, between the Islamists and the far-right movement has polarized the country. It has hardly strengthened the democratic institutions, but it is the new normal, at least for now.
