The Leninist Guerrilla Units wing of the Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist attack a Nationalist Movement Party office in Istanbul, Turkey, killing one person and injuring three.
The Nationalist Movement Party (alternatively translated as Nationalist Action Party; Turkish: Milliyeti Hareket Partisi, MHP) is a Turkish far-right, ultranationalist and Eurosceptic political party. The group is often described as neo-fascist, and has been linked to some violent paramilitaries and organized crime groups. The party is represented by 48 MPs in the Turkish Parliament which support the AKP government. Its leader is Devlet Baheli.
The party was formed in 1969 by former Turkish Army colonel Alparslan Trke, who had become leader of the Republican Villagers Nation Party (CKMP) in 1965. The party mainly followed a Pan-Turkist and Turkish nationalist political agenda throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Devlet Baheli took over after Trke's death in 1997. The party's youth wing is the Grey Wolves (Bozkurtlar) organization, which is also known as the "Nationalist Hearths" (lk Ocaklar) which contributed to the political violence in Turkey in the 1970s.Alparslan Trke founded the party after criticizing the Republican People's Party (CHP) for moving too far away from the nationalist principles of their founder Mustafa Kemal Atatrk, claiming that he would not have founded the MHP had the CHP not deviated from Atatrk's ideology. The MHP won enough seats in the 1973 and 1977 general election to take part in the "Nationalist Front" governments during the 1970s. The party was banned following the 1980 coup, but reestablished with its original name in 1993. After Trke's death and the election of Devlet Baheli as his successor, the party won 18% of the vote and 129 seats in the 1999 general election, its best ever result. Baheli subsequently became Deputy Prime Minister after entering a coalition with the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and the Motherland Party (ANAP), though his calls for an early election resulted in the government's collapse in 2002. In the 2002 general election, the MHP fell below the 10% election threshold and lost all of its parliamentary representation after the newly formed Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a plurality.
After the 2007 general election, in which the MHP won back its parliamentary representation with 14.27% of the vote, the party has strongly opposed the peace negotiations between the government and the Kurdistan Workers Party and used to be fiercely critical of the governing AKP over government corruption and authoritarianism. Nevertheless, the MHP has often been referred to by critics as the "AKP's lifeline", having covertly helped the AKP in situations such as the 2007 presidential election, repealing the headscarf ban, and the JuneJuly 2015 parliamentary speaker elections. Since 2015, Baheli has been openly supporting Erdoan and the AKP. This caused a schism within the party, resulting in Meral Akener leaving MHP to found the centrist and pro-European Y Party. The MHP supported a 'Yes' vote in the 2017 referendum, and formed the People's Alliance electoral pact with the AKP for the 2018 Turkish general election. MHP currently supports a minority government led by the AKP.
The Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist (Turkish: Türkiye Komünist Emek Partisi/Leninist) is an illegal communist party in Turkey. TKEP/L was founded on September 1, 1990, following a split in the Communist Labour Party of Turkey (TKEP).
Whereas TKEP had started orientating itself towards legal work, TKEP/L wanted to continue armed struggle. It formed an armed wing, the Leninist Guerrilla Units (Leninist Gerila Birliği). LGB carries out occasional attacks, but does not engage in regular guerrilla warfare. The last major action by LGB was on December 19, 2000, when it attacked a MHP party office in Istanbul. One MHP member was killed and three injured. The attack was vengeance for the killing of two TKEP/L prisoners.
TKEP/L has an organization inside the Turkish prisons, and TKEP/L prisoners have taken part in hunger strikes. The youth wing of TKEP/L is the 13 March Young Communist League (13 Mart Genç Komünistler Birliği).