Turkey’s beleaguered ultra-nationalists, who are vehemently opposed to the peace process initiated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), have started baring their teeth once again with a promise of violence aimed at preventing what they consider to be “treachery against the Turkish nation.” 

Addressing a rally of supporters in Bursa on March 23, Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), was met with chants of “Tell us to strike and we will strike! Tell us to die and we will die!”  While such bloodcurdling chants are not uncommon at Turkish ultra-nationalist rallies, it was Bahçeli’s response that caused the uproar in Turkey. “Don’t worry, the time will come for that, too,” Bahçeli bellowed back at the crowd, sending shivers down the spines of those who remember the bad old days before 1980.

That was a time when the group associated with the MHP called “Ülkücüler” (“The Idealists”), who are also known widely as the “Grey Wolves,” were implicated in many murders against their opponents, who at the time were predominantly left-wing and liberal activists and intellectuals.

Mehmet Ali Ağca, who murdered Abdi Ipekçi, the liberal editor of daily Milliyet, in February 1979, and gained international notoriety after he tried to kill Pope John Paul II in May 1981, was also a member of the group. The military coup on Sept. 12, 1980, ended violence by this group to a great extent, as it did with violence by armed ultra-left wing groups.