Hamit Bozarslan claimed that while the Republic of Turkey was officially secular, its policies mirrored the Turkish–Islamic synthesis in practice.
[1] Turkish Islamonationalism was popularised and encouraged as part of Operation Gladio during the Cold War by American-backed right-wing intellectuals such as Alparslan Türkeş who were concerned about the increasing Soviet-backed leftist influence in the country.
[10] In the late 1970s, the Turkish political scene was full of ideological conflicts between far-right ultranationalists (Idealists) and far-left groups, along with little-to-no governmental effort to stop it.
[11][12] The Turkish–Islamic synthesis was fully developed by Aydınlar Ocağı (Turkish: Intellectuals' Hearth) headed by Süleyman Yalçın in the 1980s.
In Gaziantep, approximately 2 dozen Syrian Arabs had to leave the city after angry Turkish crowds belonging to the Grey Wolves ransacked their homes.
[18] Another time a group of about 1,000 Grey Wolves, which organized on social media, blocked various roads in Kahramanmaraş and refused to leave even after police warnings.
They also attacked a Syrian in a car and broke his windows, however they ran away after the Turkish police fired a warning gunshot into the air.
And to help Turkmen",[21] although they were later accused of having just came into Syria to take photos with fighters, as many of the Alperen Hearths were seen in Istanbul just days after they went to supposedly fight.
[24] A Turkish politician once stated that "for a thousand years, Kurds and Turks formed an ummah that fought against the invading kuffar armies.
When I worked with Muslim Turkish NGOs in Istanbul, or in other Western cities, after becoming good friends they would tell me that they have been warned about my Kurdist tendencies.
Yet, no one calls you Chechenist, Arabist, Bosniakist when you show an interest in the sufferings of Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine, or Bosnia.
[28] Islamist and conservative groups in Turkey, such as the Refah Party, and the AKP, were accused of carrying nationalist views as well.
[32][33] Although Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially achieved the most progress in solving the conflict, he took a sharp nationalist turn in the 2010s and began restricting Kurdish cultural expressions, and most Turkish Islamonationalists supported Erdoğan and became the bulk of the opposition to increased Kurdish cultural rights in Turkey.
[34][35] Mucahit Bilici stated that "there is a clear pattern in Erdoğan's language and indeed in the approach of all Islamist interlocutors with the Kurds.
It occurs most often as part of a laundry list of ethnicities—Laz, Circassian, Georgian, Arab, Bosnian, Albanian—all specificity swamped by false diversity.
"[36] On February 23, 1979, while the 20-year-old Kurdish Raider activist, Metin Yüksel, was leaving Istanbul's Fatih Mosque, he was shot dead by Grey Wolves loyal to the MHP.
[citation needed] Sevag Balıkçı, an Armenian in the Turkish Army, was murdered by Kıvanç Ağaoglu, who was a supporter of Abdullah Çatlı, the former Grey Wolves leader.
[50] The Turkish nationalists in early Turkey were known for their secularism, Atatürk had applauded a 1926 document written by Hasan Ruşeni Barkın, titled "there is no religion, just nationality.
The Gagauz are Christian, Karaites and Khazar are Jewish, Altais are Tengrist, Yakuts are shamanist, Azerbaijanis are Shia, Anatolian Turkmens are Alevi.