Nationalist Movement Party and supporters of political Islam in Turkey in the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries

Abstract

The paper examines the history of the emergence and development of the Nationalist Movement Party (NMP) and shows the national Islamist syncretism of its ideology. The authors cite examples of cooperation between nationalists and supporters of political Islam in the 1970s1990s. Much attention is paid to the personalities of the leaders of the Nationalist Movement Party Alparslan Turkesh and Devlet Bahcheli. The authors point to the initial flexibility of the nationalist leaders, who easily retreated in the 1970s and 2010s from the declared principles for the sake of political dividends. The authors consider the reasons for the split in the camp of nationalists and the emergence of a new the Good Party (Iyi partisi) and especially the vicissitudes of the relationship between the leadership of the NMP with the leader of the Justice and Development Party R.T. Erdogan, who has been at the head of the Turkish Republic for almost two decades. The authors consider the creation of the Peoples Alliance between the parties before the 2018 elections to be a natural result of the common social base of both parties and the convergence of their basic ideological and political attitudes. The authors note the tilt of nationalists towards political Islam as well as the appeal to the nationalist agenda of the leaders of the ruling party, in particular, R.T. Erdogan. The authors have made forecasts about the prospects for the further development of relations between nationalists and adherents of political Islam in Turkey.