It's mostly about ethnic resentment of the non-Turk elements within that party; as for MHP they're the Gladio so I expect nothing else from them. There are dozens of proclamations about Turkish oppression of Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, etc. by most of the prominent members of Ak party (incidentally mostly non-Turks), esp. before they had to get into the nationalist clothing after losing in 2015 and the infighting of 2016 to garner enough votes again after their first experiment in dismantling the republic backfired electorally.
The Turkish part of their base (which is the lower educated part of ethnic Turks in this country) doesn't understand that their imperial nostalgia for a greater Turkey as in the days of Ottoman empire's height and the religious identity of that empire, can easily be abused by propagandists to break apart the nation-state as this is not the era of empires and national identities are at the heart of national interest for all modern nation-states; they cannot imagine that, in this era of nation-states, any con-federalism which may bring a greater geography under Turkish dominion (a far-fetched fantasy but it does inform their political outlook in ignoring evident corruption and contradictory actions) will only open up the country to further breaking up down the line in the future along old and new ethnic lines.
The reason such a project as EU has been possible for the past 30 years gives some people delusions about possibility of such projects in the age of nation-states. That project has only been possible due to the highest levels of welfare ever achieved in human history; the second that prosperity is in jeopardy (cf. Brexit as a minor deviation) all those nation-states will be at each-other's throats for the slightest of historical grievances (of which they have plenty).
In empires which united various ethnic groups and even nations under the auspices of the imperial family, lack of modern conceptions of nationhood, lack of widespread public education to ingrain national identity, and lack of a bourgeois class blocked any other potential allegiances competing with the allegiance to the empire. Today religion, imperial ambitions, even pan-ethnic conceptions have shown to be incapable of blocking divergence of allegiances in cases of federations and such.
Any double or triple identity opens the floodgates of dual allegiances and dual loyalty leading to inevitable schisms. Sunni Arabs of the same madhab, and even mostly the same tribes (Qahtani and Adnani tribes) in the gulf region are at each other's throats even with new-found prosperity and only now are starting to learn to get along somewhat as any divergence of interests should be dealt with much lower level of emergency as they all have free oil money and they jeopardize it when they fight. But as soon as a crisis rears its head they will be back at each other's throats again. Today's religious brothers are tomorrow's 'Syrian Arabs' vs 'Kurdish nation' vs Turkish nation free for all; demanding overdue interests and nationhood ambitions once the idyllic landscape of religious or geographic unity is history due to a crisis.
Our republic's biggest failure was the fact that it couldn't bring its nation-building to its eastern-most parts, due to capitulations, the two worst wars in history and the modern world's worst economic depression right in between. We should have done it quickly after the second world war like Italy, but due to many factors we failed. Instead of picking up where we left, and gradually achieve the nation-building in four corners of our country through the secular educational system and energized cultural institutions in the age of digital possibilities and credit expansion during the aughts, this admin has dismantled what was left of the nation-building ethos and has replaced it with posturing about imperial nostalgia and religious unitarian approaches against uniqueness of the nation (as evident by recent remarks about Malazgirt, etc.) further weakening national identity.
I'm afraid even a change of admin to chp will not be able to reverse the damage as that would require revolutionary spirit and mobilization to erect the second republic, not piecemeal temporary solutions. Such mobilization I don't see anywhere else either, just bravado and nationalist populism from mhp residues, which I don't trust the intentions and intellect of (and some eurasianist intelligence operations). Nobody is writing about it, there's no discussion, a very low social dynamism exists in this regard as the existential threat to the nation-state is not a tangible one, but it's no less real. Pamphlets, tracts, lectures and discussions should have been all flying in the air of public discourse but alas ... crickets.
Such lack of social dynamism has nothing to do with economic situation btw as one of my friends was trying to justify; highest levels of social dynamism have been achieved by nations in crisis, through war and famine. So that's not an excuse I'm willing to entertain. There should have been manifestos and white books by political parties about how the republic's judiciary and educational agenda has been eroded and what their proposals are for reversing the damage but I haven't seen any. Zero intelligentsia activity, and this is mostly a function of low levels of education and intelligence among the electorate gravitating towards populist one-liner parties and intelligentsia and those parties are always allergic to each other.
www.tdbb.org.tr
