-Caveat Lector-
>From LA Times
"Founded in the early 1960s by a charismatic former army colonel, Alparslan
Turkes, the Gray Wolves exalt the "pure Turk" over all other ethnic groups.
" <<Hmmm ...>>
Tuesday, April 20, 1999
Turkey's Gray Wolves Nip at Heels of Power
Elections: With 90% of ballots tallied, ultra-nationalists pull within 3
seats of premier's party.
By AMBERIN ZAMAN, Special to The Times
<A>NKARA, Turkey--In December 1978, Turkey's Kahramanmaras province exploded
in street fighting between left-wing and right-wing extremists that set the
stage for a 1980 military coup and haunted the country for years. Most of
the violence was blamed on an ultranationalist paramilitary group, the Gray
Wolves.
Now, after decades on the fringes of Turkey's turbulent politics, the
Gray Wolves have made a leap into the mainstream. They are vying for
electoral power in the wake of a remarkable showing in Sunday's
parliamentary elections.
Capitalizing on a mood of resurgent nationalism, the Gray Wolves,
formally known as the Nationalist Action Party, were running a close second
Monday to Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Party of the Democratic Left. With
90% of the vote tallied, the race could go either way.
Before the voting, the Gray Wolves were given little chance of breaking
the 10% minimum required to hold seats in the 550-member parliament. But
they polled 18% of the vote to win 130 seats so far--4 percentage points and
three seats behind the Democratic Left. When no party wins an absolute
majority, Turkey's president traditionally empowers the party with the most
seats to form a coalition government.
"We were hoping to do well," said Nationalist Action Party leader
Devlet Bahceli, "but not quite like this."
Party supporters across Turkey celebrated in the streets by flashing
the wolf sign--bringing down their two middle fingers to join their thumbs
in a figurative lupine snout and lifting their two other fingers to look
like wolf ears.
The wolf is a symbol of nationalism inspired by the ancient legend of
Asena, the mythological she-wolf who led the Turks out of Central Asia's
arid steppes into what is now Turkey.
Political analysts see a direct link between the party's rise and the
European Union's rejection of Turkey's bid for full membership two years
ago.
European objections to Turkey's human rights record, armed occupation
of Cyprus and military campaign against ethnic Kurds who seek self-rule
fired nationalist sentiment. Ecevit and the Gray Wolves both benefited from
Turkey's wounded pride, analysts say.
Ecevit earned his nationalist credentials during his first stint as
prime minister, when he ordered the 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Ecevit is also
credited with the capture of Kurdish guerrilla chief Abdullah Ocalan two
months ago, but the Gray Wolves helped their cause by demanding Ocalan's
execution.
"What most Turks want," said Ayse Ayata, a sociologist at Ankara's
Middle East Technical University, "is a leader who is honest and can stand
up to the West. Both Ecevit and Bahceli are perceived as such."
Founded in the early 1960s by a charismatic former army colonel,
Alparslan Turkes, the Gray Wolves exalt the "pure Turk" over all other
ethnic groups.
At the height of the Cold War, the army used the Gray Wolves as a
violent counterweight to Turkish Communists. The party's coffers swelled
with secret contributions from the government.
By the late 1970s, the Gray Wolves had spun out of state control. Their
paramilitary wing fought a campaign against leftist rivals that killed
nearly 6,000 people. Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in a 1981
assassination attempt, is alleged to have been affiliated with the party.
Banned with other parties for seven years after the 1980 coup, the Gray
Wolves bounced back with a popular issue in the 1990s, calling for a revived
Turkish empire embracing newly independent Central Asian states of the
former Soviet Union.
But the party lost support as some of its members allegedly became
involved in drug-trafficking, gun-running, extortion and killings of Kurdish
dissidents.
Prosecutors cracked down in late 1996, forcing Turkes to start purging
extremists. The cleanup accelerated after his death in 1997, when Bahceli, a
former economics professor, took over and embraced more centrist positions.
Millions of conservative voters, fed up with corruption scandals
involving more established right-wing politicians, flocked to the party. The
Gray Wolves also drew support away from Turkey's Islamist movement, which
finished first in the 1995 election but abandoned power under pressure from
the pro-secular armed forces.
For many Turks, however, the bloodshed of the 1980s remains fresh. Some
say they wonder if the Gray Wolves have been tamed.
"I remember seeing my boyfriend shot by them before my eyes," said
Melike, a former left-wing activist who has settled for suburban domesticity
and would not give her last name. "They terrified me then, they still do
today."
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
>From Washington (DC) Post
Rightist Party's Gain Could Stir Ethnic Tension in Turkey
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 20, 1999; Page A13
ANKARA, Turkey, April 19-Their campaign offices are decorated with posters
of a "greater Turkey" that includes former Soviet republics such as
Kazakhstan, an expression of the larger Turkish identity they want to
create. They have no burning desire to pull closer to Europe, and they most
of all demand a hard line against Kurdish separatists and their jailed
leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
When members of the far right Nationalist Action Party captured nearly 20
percent of the vote in Sunday's elections and positioned themselves for a
likely role in Turkey's next government, they set the stage for what could
be a turbulent debate over this country's attitude toward its Kurdish
minority and its role in the region.
To members of the party's newly elected batch of parliamentary deputies, a
group that likely will join the winning party of current Prime Minister
Bulent Ecevit to form a new government, their success is a natural outgrowth
of the failure of other parties to protect Turkey's interests.
To others, it is a haunting echo from the days when factions from the right
and left openly battled in the streets during the 1970s -- an era that led
to a military coup and gained the Nationalist Action Party a reputation for
anti-left and anti-Communist thuggery. After taking over the party two years
ago, current leader Devlet Bahceli closed many branches of a youth wing that
party officials concede were "uncontrollable" and a possible source of
embarrassment in the campaign.
Even if the party has lived down its aggressive history, its success is
disturbing to analysts who see it as a vote that will stoke antagonism with
the country's Kurdish minority and probably damage relations between Turkey
and Europe, particularly neighboring Greece.
It is, they said, the wrong time for Turkey to turn nationalist.
"Nationalism is being bombed to the south [in Iraq] and bombed to the north
[in Yugoslavia], and there is an upsurge here," said Dogu Ergil, a professor
at Ankara University who has been investigated for his work with a group
urging reconciliation between Turkey and its Kurdish minority. "It is an
anachronism."
Ecevit's Democratic Left Party led in the voting, and he is likely to emerge
as prime minister for the fourth time in his long career. At the same time,
the election indicated that the influence of the country's Islam-based
Virtue Party on national politics has peaked. After steadily gaining votes
in the 1990s and raising concern that secular Turkey might choose a
fundamentalist path, support for Virtue declined sharply in Sunday's voting.
Bahceli and nationalist party members said they will not rush into a deal
with Ecevit, and could conceivably choose to stay in opposition or even,
depending on the final vote count, demand that Bahceli become prime
minister. They said Ecevit will have to meet some of their terms if a
government is to be formed, and chief among them is a high priority for the
continued fight against Ocalan's outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party.
"The first issue is terror," said Sevket Yahnici, a Nationalist Action Party
deputy, adding that if Ocalan is given the death penalty following his
upcoming trial, the party will work to see that it is carried out. Although
the death penalty is authorized under Turkish law, executions must be
approved by the parliament, and none has been for more than a decade. Ecevit
is on record as saying that Ocalan should not be an exception to that de
facto ban on executions.
The nationalist party's success surprised Turkey's political establishment.
Its strength was not reflected in polls or in the predictions of mainstream
analysts and commentators.
It seemed, said Western diplomats, a classic statement of frustration from
Turkey's Anatolian heartland, outside the urban hubs of Ankara and Istanbul.
Besides political corruption and high inflation, nationalist sentiment has
had plenty to feed it in recent years. For example, Turkey was excluded from
the list of countries invited to join the European Union, an omission that
Turks perceived as criticism of their record on democracy and human rights.
In addition, the refusal of European nations to aid in Ocalan's capture and
extradition -- he was apprehended by Turkish agents in Kenya Feb. 15 -- was
taken as another sign that the West regards this crossroads between Europe
and Asia as an unworthy member of its club.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
>From The Telegraph (UK)
Tuesday 20 April 1999
Ecevit rides wave of Turkish nationalism
By Amberin Zaman in Ankara
RIDING a wave of resurgent nationalism, Turkey's populist Left-wing Prime
Minister was leading the field yesterday as counting in the parliamentary
election drew to a close.
Bulent Ecevit's astonishing comeback after years on the fringe is a
reflection of the yearning among Turkey's pro-secular masses for an honest
leader with a nationalist stand on foreign policy.
Bulent Ecevit: comeback <<photo>>
With his reputation for probity and hard line on Cyprus, the Kurds and
relations with the European Union, Mr Ecevit, 73, has attracted votes for
his Democratic Left Party spanning the political spectrum. He was fortunate
to be appointed caretaker premier in January after Mesut Yilmaz, his
conservative predecessor, was forced out of office amid claims of
corruption.
Just weeks after Mr Ecevit's appointment there followed the windfall of the
capture of Turkey's most wanted fugitive, the Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah
Ocalan. Yet, with about 21 per cent of the national vote, the former
journalist and Sanskrit scholar will not be able to come to power on his
own. Mr Ecevit will need to find at least one, and more probably two,
coalition partners, depriving Turkey once again of political stability. The
question now is whom Mr Ecevit will pick.
Many were predicting yesterday that the favoured partner would be the
far-Right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which confounded predictions by
attracting 18 per cent of the vote. Members of the Islamist Virtue Party,
formed after its predecessor, Welfare, was banned last year on charges of
seeking to introduce Islamic rule, saw their share of the vote dip to 16 per
cent.
The Islamists' continuing wrangles with the powerful Turkish military appear
to have scared away millions of pious voters, who turned to the MHP instead.
Its surge in popularity, particularly in the conservative Central Anatolian
provinces, has alarmed liberal Turks who recall the party's role in the
street violence of the late Seventies, pitting Left-wingers against extreme
Right-wingers and leading to the 1980 military intervention.
A coalition between Mr Ecevit and the MHP would push Turkey even farther
away from Europe. The MHP's strong showing, say Western diplomats, also
reflects popular endorsement of its advocacy of a military solution to the
15-year-long Kurdish rebellion in the south-east led by Ocalan's Kurdistan
Workers' Party.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved
the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
