Turkish mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı has spent many years terrorizing rivals and people holding completely different political beliefs than his personal. As one of many main figures of a right-wing extremist group referred to as the Gray Wolves, which has targeted its ire prior to now on leftists, Kurds and Alawites, Çakıcı is regarded as accountable for at the least 41 political murders. In 2004, a court docket sentenced him to 19 years in jail, partly for having his ex-wife murdered in entrance of their son.
Lots of people breathed a sigh of reduction when he was locked up. One of the harmful enemies of Turkish democracy had been faraway from public life for an prolonged interval.
Now, although, Çakıcı is again. Final April, he was launched from high-security Sincan Jail as a part of an amnesty associated to the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, he has more and more turn into a voice in Turkish politics.
Energy Shift
Shortly after his launch, Çakıcı visited his ally Devlet Bahçeli, head of the right-wing extremist social gathering MHP and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s coalition accomplice. In November, he issued a dying risk to opposition chief Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. “Watch your step,” he wrote on Twitter. And when 1000’s of scholars took to the streets of Istanbul originally of the yr to protest the appointment of an Erdoğan confidant to the place of rector of the famend Bosporus College, he branded the demonstrators terrorists.
Çakıcı’s newly expanded public profile is the expression of a elementary energy shift in Turkey. For a few years, Erdoğan pursued a non secular agenda. However following the 2016 putsch try involving followers of the Islamist cleric Fethullah Gülen, he has turned to the ultra-nationalists. For the reason that presidential and parliamentary elections of 2018, he has ruled in a coalition with Bahçeli’s secular, right-wing extremist Nationalist Motion Celebration (MHP).
The article you might be studying initially appeared in German in situation 15/2021 (April 9, 2021) of DER SPIEGEL.
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The social gathering is the political arm of the Gray Wolves. It could solely entice round 7 p.c assist in political surveys, however its significance has elevated massively in latest months – as has the affect of Gray Wolves veterans like Çakıcı. Whether or not it’s a battle over pure gasoline with Greece, the combat in opposition to terrorism or Ankara’s strategy to minorities, authorities coverage is more and more influenced by the MHP.
Simply how intensive the affect of the right-wing extremists has turn into might be seen in mid-March, when the chief public prosecutor, at Bahçeli’s insistence, submitted an utility to the nation’s highest court docket to ban Turkey’s second-largest opposition social gathering, the left-wing, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Celebration (HDP).
Erdoğan has been constant in his efforts to keep away from social gathering bans. His personal social gathering, the Muslim-conservative Justice and Growth Celebration (AKP), was nearly prohibited in 2008. In the end, although, he succumbed to Bahçeli’s strain, say observers in Ankara. “Bahçeli has taken probably the most highly effective man in Turkey as his hostage,” says Turkish journalist Can Dündar. “Erdoğan carries the drum, however Bahçeli kilos out the beat.”
Many Europeans see the Turkish president as a sort of modern-day sultan, who can do no matter he likes in Turkey. In actual fact, although, Erdoğan has by no means been sturdy sufficient to manipulate the nation on his personal.
Early on in his tenure, Erdoğan cooperated with the liberals, taking steps to arrange his nation for accession to the European Union and opening Turkey as much as overseas traders. Later, he fashioned a coalition with the Islamist Gülen motion, which shares Erdoğan’s disdain for the secular elite. Collectively, Erdoğan and Gülen locked away tons of of opposition activists, condemning them as terrorists in a sequence of present trials. When the Gülen motion turned too highly effective, he tried to strike a stability with the Kurds, with whom he launched an historic peace course of. Following the success of the HDP in 2015 parliamentary elections, although, he turned his again on them, too. The one companions left for him have been the ultra-nationalists.
Covert Ruler
Presidential confidantes report that Erdoğan and Bahçeli really cannot stand one another. Erdoğan’s roots are within the Islamist Milli-Görüş motion, which was oppressed within the Eighties and ’90s by right-wing extremists and Kemalists within the state equipment. He, himself, is hardly a passionate nationalist, with the group of Muslims, the umma, constantly extra necessary to him than the nation. When he rose to energy in 2003, he pledged to interrupt with the right-wing extremist networks within the army, police and judiciary, the so-called “deep state.”
Now, although, the “deep state” is extra highly effective than ever earlier than. As a result of Erdoğan does not have sufficient loyalists of his personal, he changed Gülen motion followers within the judiciary, police and army with loyalists from the Gray Wolves following the 2016 putsch try, says parliamentarian Mustafa Yeneroğlu, a former member of the AKP management who has since switched allegiances to the liberal-conservative Democracy and Progress Celebration (DEVA). “Erdoğan has made exactly these powers which have fought in opposition to us for years into the covert rulers of the nation,” he says.
The correct-wing extremists are now not significantly shy about leveraging their grip on energy. Those that dare criticize the MHP are threatened or, just like the opposition politician Selçuk Özdağ, even attacked.
The deputy head of the Mulism-conservative Future Celebration of former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Özdağ had the temerity to level out inconsistencies in Bahçeli’s political platform. In January, he was attacked by a number of club-wielding males in entrance of his dwelling in Ankara, crushed so badly that he wound up within the hospital.
Özdağ is not the one authorities critic who has been the sufferer of presumably right-wing assaults in latest weeks. In early March, journalist Levent Gültekin was crushed by 25 males in entrance of his Istanbul workplace after he referred to the MHP ideology on air as an “sickness.”
In line with Özdağ, the scenario in Turkey at the moment is just like the way it was within the Eighties and ’90s, when right-wing extremist teams, particularly the Gray Wolves, hunted down their opponents. Hundreds of leftists, Kurds and Alawites have been murdered again then, ceaselessly on the behest of the state.
Erdoğan tolerates the right-wing extremists. At the same time as tens of 1000’s of opposition activists have been arrested in Turkey over the previous a number of years, the assaults on parliamentarians and journalists have gone unpunished. Mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı has additionally been allowed to unfold his message of hate with no penalties.
Erdoğan apparently cannot afford to offend the MHP. The Turkish economic system is mired in disaster, with the coronavirus pandemic having made the scenario even worse. In the meantime, Erdoğan’s AKP has slipped within the polls to only 30 p.c. His re-election to the presidency is completely depending on assist from the right-wing extremists.
Again to the Nineties
And re-election is all that the president cares about, with all of his different political targets coming second – significantly reconciliation with the Kurds. At one level, Erdoğan granted extra rights to the Kurds than any Turkish president earlier than him. He loosened the ban on the Kurdish language and invested billions within the infrastructure of southeastern Turkey, the place the Kurds are within the majority. In 2013, he was on the point of discovering a political answer to the battle with the Kurdish terrorist group PKK.
Pushed by the ultra-nationalists, although, the president has now returned to the bellicose insurance policies of the Nineties. The previous co-leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been in jail since 2016, together with 1000’s of different HDP members. Greater than 50 Kurdish mayors have been faraway from workplace.
With the transfer to ban the HDP, Erdoğan and the right-wing extremist Bahçeli are taking the following step. They’re making an attempt to push your complete Kurdish motion out of Turkish politics. “It’s our honorable responsibility to shut the HDP on behalf of future generations in order that they can’t return beneath a distinct title,” says Bahçeli. The Constitutional Courtroom might have despatched the appliance again to state prosecutors two weeks in the past as a result of formal errors, however hardly anyone in Turkey doubts that authorized proceedings will likely be opened in the end.
The following presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2023. Observers consider that Erdoğan and Bahçeli may, although, name snap elections for as early as this fall with a view to keep away from the potential of additional financial deterioration. Simply three days after prosecutors submitted their utility for the ban of HDP, Erdoğan fired the top of the Turkish central financial institution and decreed his nation’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Conference, aimed toward stopping violence in opposition to girls.
Certainly, it appears to be like as if Erdoğan is once more pursuing the identical technique that has introduced him victory in previous elections: The novel polarization of Turkish society.