Turkey: Electoral breakthrough for far-right
01 March 1999
In April, with nearly 70% of votes counted, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) had won 18.6% of the votes, which placed it as the second largest party in the Turkish political arena. The Democratic Left Party of Prime Minister Bulevit Ecevit received 21.7% of the vote and the Islamic Virtue Party around 16%. The MHP result is striking because in the last election they failed to reach the 10% threshold necessary to enter parliament. It is likely that the Democratic Left Party will need MHP support to form the new government marking a shift to the right in domestic and foreign policy. A tougher nationalist line in the international arena is to be expected, when dealing with the principal international actors, such as the USA, Russia and the European Union. As far as domestic policy is concerned, the far-right success at the polls is likely to impede any dialogue around the Kurdish question. The MHP, as well as the Democratic Left Party, is opposed to making any concessions to Kurdish autonomy seeing it as a threat to national unity. They maintain that there in no independent Kurdish identity and therefore no Kurdish problem, only a problem of terrorism fomented by foreign powers. Another outcome of the election is to increase concern over the fate of the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who may face the death penalty with the support of the newly elected government after his trial.
Independent 20.4.99; International Herald Tribune 20.4.99; La Repubblica 30.4.99.