>>41698
"Devletto Bachievelli" theory about head of MHP Devlet Bahçeli. This one is not written by me but still interesting to read.


AKP as a relatively young party most popular with rural low-income voters has always lacked the manpower needed to efficiently run the state on its own. Initially, it was the Gülen movement which provided the support in the security bureaucracy in addition to the electoral support AKP received from Kurds and liberals. This was favorable for the West as the Gülen movement is a US-based organization that wouldn't challenge Washington's interests in the region. The most obvious example is how the peace process allowed the PKK to consolidate and advance its positions before the US would begin directly supporting the PKK in Syria. This would not have been possible under the previous secularist and nationalist military establishment.

Secularists had been increasingly anti-American, especially after the Western response to the PKK conflict, the 1997 "postmodern coup," and the secularists' refusal to cooperate with the Iraq invasion. This was why the US was such a strong advocate of Turkey's EU accession process - it allowed Gülenists to fill influential positions in the security bureaucracy with thousands of its followers, and liquidate secularists from power. The Ergenekon and Balyoz trials marked the transition from Turkish secularist/nationalist control of the state to pro-US Gülenist control, while the November 2015 election with AKP and MHP aligned began a reversal process back to putting nationalists in charge.

In hindsight, some of the many early signs of AKP-Gülenist tensions slowly unfolding began with the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, after which Fethullah Gülen gave his first ever public statement to the US press just to distance himself from the government's actions, and later more significantly in 2013, after Erdoğan planned to abolish private “prep” schools that the Gülen movement relied on for funding and new followers. Shortly after were the 2013 corruption probes, which largely targeted Halkbank for exporting gold to Iran, raising questions about whether the US was alerting Gülenists to Halkbank. It wasn't until after the fallout took place that the accused Kemalist officers in Ergenekon and Balyoz were ordered to be released in 2014. The 2015-2016 violence and timing of the 2016 coup attempt as the US was deepening its support for the PKK in Syria was another sign of the Gülen movement's close relationship with the US.

MHP's influence started growing after the June 2015 election when the peace process with the PKK was ended, and MHP continued to benefit from the AKP-Gülen rift as the July 2016 post-coup purges created a vacuum that would be filled by nationalists, leading to a total security-driven foreign policy reorientation. The fact that Erdoğan never sought MHP's support until this point speaks volumes as Gülenists are at least viewed favorably in the West and don't have a party to take votes from AKP. MHP is the opposite, and also compromises Erdoğan's Islamism. In August 2016, Operation Euphrates Shield was launched against ISIS to contain the PKK, and Aleppo was viewed as being neglected by Turkey as it fell to Assad. Further anti-PKK operations in Afrin and northeast Syria, and heavy support for Azerbaijan in Karabakh point to a nationalist priority in Turkish foreign policy. MHP supported the presidential system in 2017 to concentrate power and limit other factions from growing within the state to challenge nationalists again.