The MHP's lost coalition opportunity: political communication, discourse and strategies in the June and November 2015 elections.

• Author: Balci, Sukru
• Position: Nationalist Movement Party

Introduction

The MHP increased its votes by about two million in Turkey's June 7 general elections and its vote share jumped to 16 percent from 13 percent in the preceding elections. The rise of the MHP can be summarized in a few points. First of all, Turkish nationalism rose as a social reaction to the increasing votes going to the pro-Kurdish HDP; that evidently helped the MHP land on its' feet. The MHP received votes primarily from youth who voted for the first time, and from electors of other parties. For instance, votes shifted from the AK Party to the MHP to a certain extent, as their party grassroots overlap on some matters. AK Party votes, to a large extent, shifted to the MHP in the western part of the country. The main opposition party CHP lost a substantial number of votes to the MHP as well. There are some specific reasons behind this, rooted in local politics, but there are also more general reasons. (1)

Indeed, the MHP has become one of the strong actors of the political arena, in large part due to its gradual transformation into a center-right party, the rise of nationalist sensitivities as a reaction to escalating terrorism by the PKK, the revival of nationalist objections to EU-Turkey relations, and the negative economic impacts of the neoliberal globalization process. Most importantly, the AK Party's way of handling the Kurdish issue played a key role in the MHP's receiving more votes in June, as it did in the similar context of the general elections of 1999. (2)

Despite the MHP's increasing prominence in Turkey's political arena, the snap elections on November 1 paid off for the AK Party government when the ruling party surprisingly won a high number of votes against a dramatic decrease in the MHP vote. In the wake of the June 7 elections, Turkey's agenda was preoccupied by escalating acts of terror and failed coalition talks. The MHP's attitude, during the coalition talks in particular, resulted in a new label for the party, namely "Nay Sayer," as the MHP became the target of criticism for evading responsibility during a critical time when the country could not afford a power gap. Indeed, the need for stability and a strong government were underlined and uttered more frequently by the public in the interim between the June and November elections because of the mounting terror incidents. The emergence of such critical problems requiring immediate solutions led to the holding of a snap election [mandated by the Constitution] on November 1 and indirectly led to a decrease in the MHP vote.

It is helpful to take a closer look at these fluctuations in voter choice, first toward, and then away from the MHP, in order to understand the dynamics of the June and November elections, and how the MHP-AK Party rivalry may play out in the future. In the June 7 elections, a substantial number of conservative-nationalist constituents shifted to the MHP as a result of depreciation stemming from the 13-year-old single AK Party government and discontent stemming from some AK Party policies. After all, the cultural grounds to which the AK Party and the MHP appeal largely overlap in terms of some themes and sensitivities. Due to this overlap, some electorates who are not hardline AK Party supporters or not its staunch proponents might have been attracted to the MHP.

In contrast to this, the vote loss the MHP suffered in the November 1 elections mainly stemmed from the elections' confrontational agenda. In fact, it may be argued that the labeling of the MHP as a "Nay-Sayer" party grabbed public attention. MHP was accused of facilitating the failure of the coalition talks after June 7. In other words, the perception was raised that the unsuccessful negotiations were largely due to the attitude and discourses of the MHP. Such a perception was reinforced when the MHP closed the door to a number of demands and suggestions proposed by the opposition. This situation generated the perception that, in the political arena, the MHP was incapable of implementing any political course, so going against the nature of a political party's raison d'etre. Given the November elections results, in which the MHP suffered substantial losses compared to June, it may be argued that the MHP unsuccessfully handled its tarnished image as "a Nay-Sayer" party in public opinion and in the media.

While the MHP struggled with these issues of perception on the political front, escalating acts of terror increasingly dominated the agenda in Turkey, and led to urgent demands for stability and a single-party government. Accordingly, under the pressure of these immediate and pressing concerns, the diversity of votes and the resulting political landscape following the June 7 elections lost its desirability for the vast majority of voters. Accordingly, voters with conservative-nationalist sensitivities who chose the MHP on June 7 opted for the AK Party in November, regarding this to be the option for stability in Turkey; the need for stability and unified action clearly emerged as an important reason behind the MHP's vote loss on November 1.

In order to understand why the MHP failed to provide the electorate with a sense of safety and stability, it is helpful to look at the party's basis and traditional stances. In regard to its main reference and emphasis, the MHP has built a discourse and political practice on the basis of Turkish nationalism. A chain of discourse themes such as state, security, terror, identity politics, foreign policy, globalization and the economy circulate around the basis of the MHP's nationalist emphasis and theme. Simply put, the MHP's hard-core ideology rests on Turkish nationalism and occasionally reflects a Turkish-Islam synthesis. In this regard, since the 1990s, the MHP has experienced--albeit slowly--a certain transformation, characterized by a shift towards the center, while developing political practices and discourses by remaining loyal to its generally stable and fixed political position.

It is possible to interpret this positioning in two ways. At first glance, the MHP's posture may be qualified as a consistent and sustainable principal attitude. Yet, the fact remains that voters did not flock to this tenet in the interest of stability. At second glance, then, the MHP's positioning may be interpreted as an insistence on a resistant and persistent stance unresponsive to changing conditions in Turkey and in the world. In its perceived inability to chart a political course for Turkey, the MHP appeared incapable of creating policies appropriate for the changing conjuncture of Turkey's needs and goals, developments or problems, and seemed lodged in a fixed perception of the world.

As Turkey's political landscape continues to evolve, will the MHP be perceived as a bastion of nationalistic stability? Or an outmoded relic, clinging to an old dream of national, ethnic unity, which is being replaced by Turkey's positioning in a new, diverse and global community? How strongly and to what extent voters share the general political stance and discourse of the MHP, which are rooted in the main theme of Turkish nationalism, is another important question. (3) The answers of these questions are elaborated in this study.

A Brief History of the MHP's Ideological Evolution

The process of the MHP's ideological fermentation dates back to the Ottoman-Republic axis. The MHP emerged as a political entity when its founding-father, the late Alparslan Turkes, participated in the Republican Peasantry Nation Party (CKMP) during a party convention in 1965. (4) His goal was to reorganize the party and to set new objectives according to his own political ideology. In parallel with this, Turkes was selected as the new chairman of the party at a CKMP extraordinary convention on August 1, 1965. As soon as Turkes became the chairman of the party, the CKMP adopted a pan-Turkish and anti-communist discourse ornamented with Islamic references. "The nine-light doctrine," formulated by Turkes in 1967, was adopted as the principle doctrine and the party's name was changed to the MHP at an extraordinary party convention in 1969. (5) This name change may be read as a development symbolizing a change in the party's dominant character with the arrival of Turkes. In other respects, it is possible to say that the MHP has been identified with Turkes and has become an indivisible whole since then. (6)

Formulated as "anti-communism" in the party's development process, the MHP's mission has been a key element of its development since the late 1960s. The MHP joined the anti-communist struggle in the 1970s with a self-assumed mission of being "a Pro-State Civil Power." However, the MHP's mission and self-identification with the state failed due to the March 12, 1971 military intervention in Turkey. The MHP experienced yet another shock due to the September 12, 1980 military coup d'etat and the attitude towards the party during the period of the 1980-1982 military government. In fact, the period of the September 12 coup was experienced not as a military takeover that would conform to the imaginations of the MHP's Ulkucu (Idealist) grassroots, but rather as a period in which the MHP and Turkes, together with other parties and party leaders, were taken into custody. Although the MHP's top officials tried to identify with the mission of the September 12 coup d'etat with the expression, "the man is in the cell, his ideas are in power" at first, this resulted in an identity and legitimacy crisis among the party grassroots of the Ulkucu Movement. Constructed by the Aydinlar Ocagi (the Heart of the Enlightened) in the post-September 12 period, the doctrine of Turkish-Islamic Synthesis gave body to the main dynamic of the MHP's ideological mixture. In other words, the determining factor behind the process of change in the Ulkucu Movement's political orientation and discourse in the post-September 12 period was Islamization. (7)

In the 1990s and afterwards, the...