Abstract

The far right in Turkey has been identified with the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi – MHP) for a long time. Although it is a party that continues its activities on a legal basis, the youth organisation of the party has used violence from time to time. In October 2017, some noteworthy figures who broke away from the MHP as a result of an internal split led to the founding of a new nationalist political party, the Good Party (İYİ Parti). Based on this situation, this chapter seeks to answer the questions regarding the cause of the split in the Turkish far right and how it would affect the potential for violence on this flank. Using the cleavage theory as a theoretical framework, it examines the ideological structures, political discourses, and electoral bases of the two parties. It concludes that the MHP could not maintain its integrity mainly due to the intense polarisation experienced in the last decade in the country’s political sphere since it had conducted its politics on a prominent political cleavage for a long time and this party’s radicalisation potential increased as moderate/non-violent elements shifted to the Good Party in this process.

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