Year of the Wolf: Turkey’s Election Results

Turkey is far from a perfect democracy, but it hasone thing right: sometimes democracy is messy. (See also Forward Tracking) An election which, at least in the hopes of the Turkish business community and stock market, stood some chance of resolving the secularist/Islamist deadlock of the past three and a half years and even offered some hope of a coalition dependent on only two parties, appears instead to have reshuffled the deck in ways which may make the new government the strongest in many years, or, alternatively, leave Parliament even more deadlocked than the last one. The story is not who won, but who placed second and third. It was the year of the wolf: the grey wolf.

The last election in late 1995 left an Islamist Party, then called Welfare, in the number one position, but it only served in coalitions for a year of the three and a half years since that vote. Its successor, Virtue, was hoping to lead the pack again, or at least run second. The two big centrist parties remain hostile to each other; the hostility between Mesut Yilmaz and Tansu Çiller kept them from working together, but Çiller’s alliance with Welfare greatly decreased her electoral strength. Meanwhile, the left has been strengthened by the popularity of Bülent Ecevit, Prime Minister for the past few months.With the added reputation which came with the capture of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, Ecevit hoped that his Democratic Left Party would run first and Yilmaz’ Motherland Party second, and that between them they would have enough to form a left-center coalition which could rule without other partners, even if Virtue ran strong.

One factor played little role in most pre-election predictions: the Nationalist Action Party (MHP, also sometimes translated as Nationalist Movement Party), a far-right, ultra-nationalist, some would say crypto-Fascist party, which participated in coalitions in the 1970s and ran in alliance with the Welfare Party in 1991, but which did not win enough votes in 1995 to gain seats in the Grand National Assembly. It subsequently gained three seats from defections, but was a minor force in the past parliament, and since its founder and Ba bug (leader), Alparslan Türke , died a couple of years ago, many had tended to dismiss it as a major force. Not so. Its new leader, Devlet Bahçeli, had tried to distance the party somewhat from its fascist elements and its links with the “Grey Wolves” militia, though the party still uses the wolf as its symbol, drawing from an ancient pre-Islamic Turkish totem. The MHP came within six parliamentary seats of being the largest party, and is a force Ecevit’s victorious DSP will have to reckon with.

What is going on here? Has Turkey suddenly swung sharply right? Or is the Turkish electorate simply anti-establishment, and voting for the MHP in part because it knows Virtue will not be allowed to form a government? Virtue still ran third, and the MHP and Virtue together hold240 seats in the 550 seat Assembly, a potentially powerful anti-establishment bloc. This Dossier analyzes the results. (All results are unofficial final numbers, which could change slightly.)

B ülent Ecevit’s “game plan” was simple enough: his own, center-left Democratic Left Party (DSP), and Mesut Yilmaz’s center-right Motherland Party (ANAP) needed to take two of the top three positions, along with the Islamist Virtue Party (FP). Hopefully, they would win enough seats to form a two-party coalition without either Virtue, which the Army opposes seeing in government, or Tansu Çiller’s True Path Party (DYP), which has lost support, has become more pro-Islamist, and which still suffers from the inveterate personal rivalry of Yilmaz and Çiller. Not only Ecevit and Yilmaz, but the Turkish stock market, the secular establishment, and presumably the Army, were hoping for a two-party coalition. A coalition requiring three parties to win a majority starts having to make deals which paralyze its freedom of action.

Everyone expected Çiller’s party to lose seats, which it did. Deniz Baykal’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) was expected to lose; though the heir to the name of Kemal Atatürk’s sole party, it has been declining in strength in recent elections and has lost power on the left of center to Ecevit’s DSP. The CHP in fact failed to win the 10% needed to gain seats in the Parliament. Everyone expected Virtue (FP) to do less well than its Islamist predecessor, Welfare (RP) did in 1995. It did: instead of running first, it ran third (though it continued to do well in winning city halls and municipal councils).

So far, many expectations were met. Ecevit led the DSP to a new first place. Virtue did not do as well as Welfare, the CHP dropped off the charts, and will not be in the new Parliament, and Çiller’s DYP lost strength. But no one counted on the resurgence of the far-right wing Nationalist Action Party. Though the MHP had served in some coalition governments in the 1970s, it had seemed to be a waning power. In 1991 it ran on a joint ticket with Welfare. In 1995 it failed to win enough votes to make it into Parliament. (The three seats it held going into the new elections came from deputies who switched parties.) Its historic leader, Colonel Alparslan Türke , died in 1997, and his successor, Devlet Bahçeli, is considered far less charismatic. (Profiles, Page 10.) Yet, stunningly, the MHP surged to second place. Though it ran well behind Ecevit’s DSP in terms of percentage of the vote (18.1% to 22.1%), it came within six seats of being the largest party in Parliament (136 for the DSP to 130 for the MHP). A DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition, which seemed likely at presstime (see box above) would be more stable than the coalitions since 1995, and would be strongly nationalistic.

It is also worth remembering that party totals do not remain set in stone throughout the life of the parliament. There is a long tradition of bolting parties, and sometimes — as when Çiller’s DYP unraveled during her coalition with Welfare in 1996-1997 — a party can lose (or gain) dozens of seats. It is not impossible that at some point during this parliament the MHP could even become the largest party in the Assembly.

The Anti-Establishment Element

The major problem created by the 1995 elections was the fact that the largest single party, Welfare, was an anti-establishment party, in fact one which was utterly anathema to the secularist, Kemalist Turkish establishment. In one sense, the emergence of Ecevit’s DSP as the largest single party at least removes that problem: Virtue can be passed over. in another sense, the new situation is even worse. Two of the top three parties are now anti-establishment to some degree, the MHP and Virtue. Between them they control more than 40% of Parliament.

Some will no doubt object that the two parties are quite different and unable to make common cause. One is an ultra-nationalist party with what can fairly accurately and without exaggeration be called quasi-fascist trappings; the other is an Islamist party. But the two parties have cooperated in the past (in the 1991 elections), and share some views in common: both have a populist streak, an both are anti-establishment, in the sense of feeling excluded from the secular, Kemalist, Turkish mainstream — or what used to be the mainstream, at any rate. Both have an electoral appeal in the teeming, poorer suburbs of the bigcities. If the MHP finds itself excluded from a potential coalition by Ecevit, it might seek to form a coalition of its own, including Virtue, though initially it has ruled out such a pairing.

Unless the electoral tally changes over time, the MHP and Virtue do not have enough seats to form a two-party coalition, and would thus need the cooperation of one of the secular parties to have a chance at governing together. The only one of the other three big parties which might join a government including Virtue would be Çiller’s DYP. Such a coalition would not sit well with the Army or the establishment, but it is certainly not impossible. It will not be the first government formed from these election results, but if coalitions again prove unstable, it might come about.

It should be noted, too, that the anti-establishment trend is seen elsewhere, particularly in the local elections, which were held at the same time as the general elections. Virtue’s share in the national parliament dropped (and a leadership struggle is expected in the party), but it continued to do well at the city level, including Istanbul, despite the jailing of its previous Mayor of Istanbul.

In addition, the pro-Kurdish legal party, HADEP (the People’s Democracy Party), though falling well short of the 10% of the national vote needed to get into Parliament, ran very well in local elections in the Kurdish southeast. Though there is an effort under way to ban HADEP (as well as Virtue), its strength in the Kurdish areas suggests that the anti-establishment trend can be seen there too.

Why Did the MHP Do So Well?

Given the MHP’s extreme right-wing ideology, its use of the wolf symbolism and other elements which have the flavor of 1930s fascism, and the notoriety of the “Grey Wolves” in the 1970s as part of the urban warfare by party militias, why did the MHP do so well? Is the Turkish electorate swinging to the far right, or have the MHP’s efforts to present itself as a moderate rightist force succeeded?

While each of these may be true in part, an early assessment would be that there are several other factors equally present:

The anti-establishment vote by disillusioned voters in the Turkish cities, dismayed by corruption allegations and the lack of progress under establishment party governments, was a major source of Welfare’s strength in 1995; with it now fairly evident that Virtue would not be allowed to form a government, voters may have simply switched to the other obvious anti-establishment party, the MHP, in the hopes that this will break the paralysis of Turkish politics since 1995.

Conservative and rightist voters appear to have abandoned both Yilmaz’ ANAP and Çiller’s DYP in droves, presumably because of the two formerly big right-centrist parties’ inability to work together and record of corruption.

The capture of Abdullah Öcalan has fueled hard-line sentiments towards the PKK insurgency. By far the hardest line on dealing with the PKK is that of the MHP; they may have benefited from an anti-Kurdish, anti-PKK sentiment in the electorate. Just as Ecevit’s DSP benefited from being in office when Öcalan was captured, the MHP benefits from this surge in Turkish nationalist feelings.

Continued Turkish chagrin about being excluded from membership in the European Union has exacerbated Turkish nationalist feelings. Kemal Atatürk mixed Turkish nationalism with an insistence on European identity, but with the door to Europe seemingly closed, many Turks are reacting by reasserting non-European aspects of their identity. Those who chose Islam presumably voted for Virtue; those who chose Turkic ethnicity chose the MHP.

Not everyone necessarily accepts the whole apparatus of the symbolism of the grey wolf as the mother of the Turks, or the other extreme trappings of the MHP and its ideology, but the MHP proved a vehicle for protest. And despite the fascist trappings, there are indications that the MHP wants to play by the rules, and wants to be part of a governing coalition. Still, it is a new factor, being present in such strength. And whatever form future coalitions take, they will be taking it into account. Bülent Ecevit won a personal victory, but this will be remembered as the year of the grey wolf.

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