“Right Turn” in Turkey in the European Context

The second decade of the 21st century is often described as the time of a new rise of right nationalist and right populist parties all over the world. The rising presence of big right factions in European parliaments makes experts talk about a “right turn” phenomenon. At the same time Turkey, a country that unites in itself both European and Middle Eastern political and civilizational specifics, is witnessing an apparently similar process to occur. The authors of the article analyze the reasons of right parties’ success in Europe and conditions that provide popularity for the right wing. Primarily, this success has been associated with an inner structural crisis of the European Union, which was acknowledged by the general public following the 2015 migration crisis. The authors mostly focus on the 2018 parliament elections in Turkey, which gave the majority of seats to right and center-right parties. They also survey the history and the place of nationalism in the country’s political system, and investigate the reasons making the Turkish political elites to turn to the nationalistic ideology at present. The authors conclude that in spite of a formal similarity in the observed political processes and the literal congruence of some of the reasons that have determined the right rise in Europe and Turkey, we shouldn’t consider the right wing’s successes in the Republic of Turkey and in the European Union to be the parts of the same global process, as their endogenous causes differ.