Turkish involvement in the Syrian war has been heavily dominated by Islamist fighters, but the conflict has also drawn in an unlikely quarter — Turkish nationalists. The far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and its youth branch, the Idealist Hearths, have recently come into the spotlight with high-profile losses on the Syrian battlefield. The MHP is the main body of Turkey’s ultranationalist movement, also known as the Gray Wolves, whose hall of fame includes failed papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca. The Alperen Hearths, the youth branch of the smaller Great Union Party, which represents the ultranationalist movement’s Islamist-leaning wing, are also visibly interested in the Syrian war.
The reason Turkish ultranationalists have gone to fight in Syria is the Turkmens, the ethnically Turkish minority that has increasingly found itself in Russia's crosshairs. After the Russian airstrikes began Sept. 30, military operations targeting Bayir Bucak, the Turkmen region in the Latakia countryside, intensified. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), meanwhile, stirred public sensitivities over the Turkmens, and the government propaganda most resonated in the ultranationalist quarter.
While Turkish Islamists were regulars on the jihadi scene from Afghanistan and Chechnya to Bosnia and Kosovo, the ultranationalists had only taken feeble interest only in Chechnya’s independence struggle. Hence, their role in Syria comes as an unprecedented cross-border venture.
The latest ultranationalist casualty in Syria to make the headlines was Ibrahim Kucuk, the deputy head of the MHP branch in Istanbul’s Fatih district. He was killed in a Russian raid on Mount Turkmen in Bayir Bucak, where he had fought for two months. A well-known leader in the Islamic community led the prayers at his funeral in Istanbul last week; among the senior MHP lawmakers attending were Oktay Vural, Celal Adan and Meral Aksener. An even more noteworthy mourner was Alparslan Celik — the Turkish fighter in Syria who shot dead the pilot who ejected from the Russian jet Turkey downed in November.
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