Alparslan Türkeş

His paternal great-grandfather had emigrated to Cyprus from Kayseri, Ottoman Empire, in the 1860s.

His father, Ahmet Hamdi Bey, was from Tuzla, near Famagusta, and his mother, Fatma Zehra Hanım, was from Larnaca.

However, in an interview with the scholar Fatma Müge Göçek the journalist Hrant Dink claimed that Türkeş was of Armenian descent, an orphan originally from Sivas who was later adopted by a Muslim couple from Cyprus.

Alparslan Türkeş (25 November 1917 – 4 April 1997) was a Turkish politician, who was the founder and president of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Grey Wolves (Ülkü Ocakları).

Türkeş was born in Nicosia, British Cyprus, to a Turkish Cypriot family in 1917.

His birth name is disputed, some claiming that it is Hüseyin Feyzullah, while MHP claims it is Ali Arslan.

In 1932, with fifteen years of age, Türkeş emigrated to Istanbul, Turkey with his family.

He was enrolled into the military lycée in Istanbul in 1933 and completed his secondary education in 1936.

In 1938, he joined the army and his military career began.

Along with other nationalists like Nihal Atsız and Nejdet Sançar, Türkeş was court-martialed on charges of "fascist and racist activities" in 1945.

He spent 10 months in prison before he was released the same year.

The charges were eventually dismissed in 1947.

The trial would become known as the Racism-Turanism trials.

He attained fame as the spokesman of the 27 May 1960 coup d'état against the government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was later executed after the Yassiada trial. He assumed a positionas an undersecretary of the Prime minister.

However Türkeş, together with, declared their opposition to returning the power back to civilians and therefor were expelled by an internal coup within the junta (National Unity Committee).

Türkeş was sent into exile to the Turkish embassy in New Delhi.

He returned in February 1963 and together with others of the fourteen, he later joined the Republican Villager Nation Party (Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi, CKMP).

Türkeş was elected as its chairman on 1 August 1965.

In 1965, Türkeş released a political pamphlet titled Nine Lights Doctrine (9 Işık Doktrini), which formed the basis of the nationalist ideology of the CKMP.

This text listed nine basic principles which were: nationalism; idealism; moralism; scientism; societalism; ruralism; libertism and personalism; progressivism and populism; industrialism and technologism.

Hans-Lukas Kieser notes that although Türkeş openly identified with pan-Turkism and sympathised with National Socialism as well as Adolf Hitler, he was still allowed to rise through the ranks of the Turkish Army and was even allowed to move to the United States in order to pursue military education and cooperation within NATO.

Türkeş led the vanguard of anti-communism in Turkey; he was a founding member of the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish Gladio.

He has been the spiritual leader of the Idealism Schools Foundation of Culture and Art (Ülkü Ocakları Kültür ve Sanat Vakfı).

His followers consider him to be one of the leading icons of the Turkish nationalist movement.

The wellbeing of the greater Turkish nation living in a so called Turan, which according to him included Turks wherever they lived, be it in Greece, Cyprus or elsewhere, was key concern of his political views.

He ran the Grey Wolves training camps from 1968 to 1978.

More than 600 people are said to have fallen victim of political murders by the Grey Wolves between 1968 and 1980.

He represented the far-right of the Turkish political spectrum.

He was and still is called Başbuğ ("Leader") by his devotees.

This far-right movement executed political murders, which begann in 1968.

More than 600 people are said to have fallen victim between 1968 and 1980.

In 1969 the CKMP was renamed the Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP).

As leader of the MHP he was also the de facto leader of the Grey Wolves.

Türkeş served as Deputy Prime Minister in right-wing National Front (Milliyetçi Cephe) cabinets in the 1970s.

On 28 April 1978 he was received by Franz Josef Strauss, former minister for defense and finance in Germany and acting president of the CSU party.

After the Military coup of 1980, he was imprisoned for more than four years and the Government demanded the death sentence for him as well as other Turkish nationalists.

But in a turn of events he was released on the 9 April 1985.

He rejoined the political arena within the (MÇP) in 1987 and was elected to parliament representing the province of Yozgat on a ticket of the Welfare Party (RP) in 1991.

In 1992 the name Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was relaunched in exchange of the name of the MÇP and the party logo of the three crescents was presented to the public.

Through the far-right MHP, Türkeş took the rightist views of his predecessors like Nihal Atsız, and transformed them into a powerful political force.