Question to those who know these things:
Why did the MHP back Ihsanoglu? Is Kemalism really that transparently a defense of elite groups that the fascists prefer it to Erdogan?
Also can anyone explain Demirtas' pattern in the west of the country? Urban areas?
1) The MHP is a secular party.
2) The MHP, for all its horrible history, is not really that ideological beyond being secular. In the late 90s/early 2000s, they took part in a coalition government with the Democratic Left Party, the party they were bombing in the 70s.
3) That coalition I spoke of, like the one that existed this year, was basically an anti-Islamist one. There is historical precedent.
4) The MHP is not that far removed from Kemalism themselves. They might be official Kemalist for all I know.
However, it should be pointed out that regardless Ihsanoglu did not run a Kemalist campaign. He was basically just "not Erdoğan".
I was talking to a Turkish acquaintance earlier this year about Turkish politics, and he definitely seemed to organize the parties on a spectrum with the CHP and MHP on the same side - nationalist and militantly secular - with one just more extreme than the other. This person, for what it's worth, was secular and anti-Erdogan but also kind of down on the opposition parties.
