Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

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Turkish leaders stole nationalist
thunder from 'grey wolves' founder
Right-winger Alparslan Türke~
dead, but influence lives on
GERD HOElß..ER
Frankfurter Rundschau/GNNS
• The leader of the 'Grey Wolves' may be
dead, but the sentiments stirred up by that ultranationalist
organislltion remain a force to be
reckoned with in Turkey.
The powerful appeal of Alparslan Türke~
could be seen in the crowd of thousands which
gathered quickly around the Baymdlr Hospital
in Ankara on Friday, after word spread like
wildfire that he had been rushed there following
a heart attack. "Leaders never die!" the crowd
shouted. Many of them - like countless Turks
elsewhere - fell to their knees, turned to Mecca
and prayed aloud for his recovery.
In fact, the 80-year-old "Ba~bug" (leader)
was already dead, but the announcement was
delayed five hours to allow for nationwide security
measures to be put in place against possible
disturbances by fanatical followers .
All the country's top leaders paid tribute to
Türke~. President Süleyman Demirel described
his death as a "great loss" to the nation. Prime
Minister Necmettin Erbakan said he had played
an important role in the country's political
development, while Foreign Minister Tansu
Çiller called him an "historic individual."
Despite the accolades, Türke~, who was born
in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1917, had been one of the
most controversial figures in Turkish political
life for the past four decades. Even in the 1940s
he had made no secret of his admiration for
Adolf Hitler, and several times was charged
with making Fascist declarations.
Then, in 1960, the army colonel was one of
the leaders of a military putsch.
By the late 1960s, having become leader of
the Nationalist Movement Party (NMP), he
began building a combat unit on the Nazi
model. He called it "Bozkurtlar" (the Grey
Wolves), drawing on a fable in which those animals
led the Turkish people from their original
home in Central Asia to Anatolia.
Impulsive by temperament, Türke~ was
inclined toward radical, simplistic solutions,
preaching to his followers a "national social-
Ism" - which he saw as the third way between
capitalism and communism - combined with an
aggressive nationalism.
He wanted to unite Turkish peoples from the
Balkans and the former Soviet Umon with their
ethnic brothers of Turkey proper to create a
"great empire" reaching from the Adriakc Sea
to Mongolia.
At the same time, Türke~ flatly rejected
efforts by the Kurds of southeastern Turkey to
establish a distinct cultural or ethnic identity for
themselves.
Türke~ and his associates won huge influence
beginning in the mid-1970s, when they helped
secure a parliamentary majority for Demirel,
then a right-conservative prime minister. In
return, Demirel named Türke~ vice-premier.
As a result, followers moved into key positions
in the bureaucracy and police, enabling the
Grey Wolves to take their struggle into schools
and universities, factories and government ministries.
The Grey Wolves have been blamed for
more than 1,000 politically motivated murders
in the last half of the 1970s.
Türke~ was also closely associated with the
chaos and bloody terror which led to another
military putsch in September 1980. In 1987, he
was convicted of complicity in several murders
and sentenced to eleven years in prison.
The sentence, however, was later suspended,
and Türkef returned to politics. In last
December s parliamentary elections the NMP
failed to reach the 10-per cent hurdle for representation,
though that was not because the
extreme right-wing ideas he had championed
were no longerpopular in Turkey.
Rather, he was to a large extent a victim of
his own successin helping make such ideas so
popular. Otherpoliticians like Erbakan, Çiller
and even the"social~democratic" opposition
leader BülentEcevit stole Türke~' super-patriotic
rhetoric and used it to carve away some of the
nationalist vote for themselves.
Even his0fPonents paid tribute to Türke~'
great politica experience, and to the end he was
sought ouI(or his advice. Only a few weeks ago
he warned ofthe danger of a coup: everyone
understood Ihata warning from someone so
adept at plotting against elected governments
was notlo be taken lightly.