Nationalist Movement Party

The Nationalist Movement Party, or alternatively translated as Nationalist Action Party (Turkish: Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP), is a far-right, ultranationalist political party in Turkey. The party is neo-fascist and has been linked to violent paramilitaries and organized crime groups. The party's youth wing is the Grey Wolves (Bozkurtlar) organization, which is also known as the "Nationalist Hearths" (Ülkü Ocakları) which played one of the biggest roles during the political violence in Turkey in the 1970s.

The party was formed in 1969 by former Turkish Army colonel Alparslan Türkeş, who had become leader of the Republican Villagers Nation Party (CKMP) in 1965. He 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 Atatürk, claiming that he would not have founded the MHP had the CHP not deviated from Atatürk's ideology. The party mainly followed a Pan-Turkist and Turkish nationalist political agenda throughout the latter half of the 20th century. 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 participating in a coalition government, 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 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 June–July 2015 parliamentary speaker elections. Since 2016, Bahçeli and the MHP has been a key ally of Erdoğan and the AKP. This caused a schism within the party, resulting in Meral Akşener and other prominent members leaving MHP to found the anti-Erdoğanist İYİ Party. MHP currently supports a minority government led by the AKP.