By Nazlan Ertan
İp (noun, rope, as in noose) made a dramatic entrance into Turkey’s political lexicon this week when the İyi Party’s new-ish leader, Müsavat Dervişoğlu, hurled a noose at MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli. This came in response to Bahçeli’s suggestion that PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan could be granted certain privileges—potentially even addressing Parliament—if he were to publicly call for the PKK’s dissolution. (For details, see last and this week’s Deep Dive.)
The call from the hardline nationalist Bahçeli sparked a wide range of reactions and interpretations, but Dervişoğlu’s noose-hurling stunt stood out, mainly because it echoed a political moment Bahçeli himself had staged years earlier. Back then, Bahçeli, as a staunch opponent of Erdoğan, famously tossed a noose to then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, declaring, “I couldn’t hang [Öcalan when he was captured in 1999], so you do it…You don’t have enough rope? Here, I’ll give you some.” When Ocalan was captured in Nairobi in 1999, Bahçeli was in the tripartite coalition led by the social democrat DSP, which abolished the death penalty in Turkey in 2002 to harmonize its laws with the EU.
Ironically, Dervişoğlu was a member of the MHP when Bahçeli made that speech.
Fast forward to Oct. 23, and Dervişoğlu retorted with his own noose, accusing Bahçeli of failing not only to hang Öcalan but also of “hanging the dreams and national interests of this country.”
Local media reported that Bahçeli, not one to let a symbol pass him by, requested the noose from the İyi Party so he could hang it in his office. The İyi Party obliged, confirming that the noose had indeed been sent to Bahçeli. In a final jab, Dervişoğlu suggested that Bahçeli should first hang his speech on the wall, none-too-modestly underscoring the significance of his own remarks.
This incident has highlighted the fierce battle for the nationalist votes between MHP and its splinter faction, IYI Party, and it has also inspired a string of Turkish proverbs related to ropes. “One could never go down a well with Bahçeli’s rope,” one social media user quipped, referencing the saying ‘Onun ipiyle kuyuya inilmez’ (he’s not dependable). So the question is: Were Bahçeli’s remarks pure nonsense—ipe sapa gelmez laflar—or was the nationalist leader following the president’s lead, with Erdoğan “holding his rope”—İpi Erdoğan’ın elinde?
