Elections in Turkey: A Nationalist Landslide

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May 3, 1999

After a legislation period full of turbulent changes in government, with several corruption scandals and a final coup such as the arrest of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, some kind of landslide could have been expected by the Turkish general elections. What really surprised was, however, the kind of change Turkish voters liked to sentence on sunday 18th April. Not so much the success of the winner, prime minister Bulent Ecevit, whose Democratic Left (DSP) reached 22,3 % (+ 7,6 %), but the strengthening of the extreme right of Devlet Bahceli.

A lucky premier

Ecevit, who had been lucky to become prime minister only in February, just a few weeks before the brilliant operation that trapped Ocalan in Kenya, was able to take advantage from the nationalist wave that hit the country after this government success as well as he did from the troubles of his scandal ridden political opponents on the center-right. His party has now with 136 mandates the biggest representation in the Turkish Parliament. The 73-year old Ecevit, who had already been prime minister twice in the 70s, is now supposed to form the new cabinet, the fifth in his long political career.

What should trouble this old survival cat with nine lives, however, is the new parliaments composition he'll have to deal with. The real great surprise of the electoral result was indeed the great success of the second winner, the far right National Action Party (MHP) which boldly passed the 10 % hurdle and holds now with 18,1 % (+9,9 %) 129 seats.

The Nationalists' advance

In the last parliament the Nationalists, who are known especially for their paramilitary wing named the "Grey Wolves," had not even conquered one seat. Nationalistic ideology has often led these groups to exalting "the Turk" as a racially superior being. After party riots in 1980 which cost the lives of some 6,000 Turks, the MHP had been banned by the generals taking over.

After their readmission in the '90s the party's historic leader, Alparslan Turkes, and after his death in 1997 the new leader, Devlet Bahceli, had started a clean-up, purging some of the most notorious party villains and recruiting some academics instead. Thus, after the failure of the other parties, Turkish voters this time decided to reward this new course and give the 52-year old Bahceli a chance.

The Fundamentalists punished

All other Turkish parties were instead among the losers of this elections.

The winner of the last elections, the fundamentalist Virtue Party had to pay for its conflict with the generals and for their unbridled religious zeal and intolerance. First party in the last elections, the fundamentalist, who had governed under the name of Welfare Party for almost two years before being banned in 1997, this time reached only 15 % (- 6,3 %) and 111 seats (158). After the determined and irremovable opposition of the military against a new government mandate for the fundamentalists, the more radical Turks decided to put their hopes this time on the untested Nationalists.

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