Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
A neo-nationalist faction in Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT, is reportedly behind a newly formed ultra far-right group that embraces Hitler’s National Socialist ideology, promotes the supremacy of Turkish ethnicity and vows to combat non-Turkish ethnicities.
Primarily organized among youth in various Turkish provinces and across Europe, the group operates under the name National Front Party (Ulusal Cephe Partisi), despite its unofficial status, and is led by 24-year-old former soldier and mechanical engineer Onurcan Koçak.
The group was launched on May 19, 2022, a symbolic date marking the 104th anniversary of the start of the Turkish War of Independence by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in 1919. It aspires to become Turkey’s national socialist party, similar to the Nazi Party in Hitler’s Germany.
Despite having a limited following of only about a thousand, the group possesses the resources to carry out provocative street actions, including demonstrations, vandalism, graffiti, banner placements and even weapons training. It actively promotes Nazi ideology, circulating Turkish-translated quotes from Hitler and other Nazi Germany leaders, while frequently targeting Jews, Arabs and Africans with hostile rhetoric.
The group has publicly aligned itself with the anti-immigrant, racist Victory Party (Zafer Partisi), led by Ümit Özdağ, a Turkish intelligence operative who has maintained a covert alliance with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government for some time.
The Victory Party played a key role in dividing the opposition during Turkey’s last elections, shaping the national debate by focusing on the Syrian refugee community. It became a political outlet for disgruntled voters who might have otherwise supported mainstream opposition parties. Its stance on many issues significantly benefited President Erdogan.
In last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, the Victory Party, competing for the first time, secured 1.2 million votes, accounting for 2.23 percent of the nationwide total — votes that could have propelled the opposition bloc to victory if not siphoned off by the party. Meanwhile, the Turkish media, dominated and controlled by the government, opened its doors to Özdağ, allowing him to communicate his party’s ideology to the masses with apparent approval from the Edogan regime.
In contrast to the Victory Party, the National Front Party, as an illegal and unregistered organization, operates with greater freedom to escalate anti-immigrant rhetoric in Turkey. Its members openly admire Hitler, use Nazi symbols, engage in firearms training and carry out demonstrations and acts of vandalism. While some members have been involved in violent incidents, they have faced little to no real consequences in the criminal justice system.
The group designates minority ethnic groups — particularly Jews, Arabs, Kurds, Russians, Ukrainians and Blacks — as enemies.
Some members of the group were detained as part of an investigation into the beating of Kurds during the Bursaspor-Diyarbakırspor match on December 20, 2023, but they were later released. On February 4, 2024, the group hung a banner reading “The only truth is the yellow [body] bag” on a fence outside the office of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), issuing a death threat against Kurdish politicians.
On April 25, 2024 group members vandalized the DEM Party building in Adana province.
“Those who love shit-faced, unevolved primitive beings (blacks) should either go to Africa or wait for the day we shave their hair and let them walk the streets on a leash…” the group posted on December 6, 2023 on its Telegram channel in response to a traffic accident in which Mohammed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the son of Somalia’s president, collided with a motorcycle, resulting in the death of the driver in November 2023.
The National Front vehemently opposes interracial and mixed marriages, drawing inspiration from Hitler’s Germany in its rhetoric against African people. The group advocates sending children from such marriages to concentration camps and stripping them of their citizenship. In Nazi Germany, Africans — especially those born after French colonial troops occupied the Rhineland — faced persecution. In his writings Hitler described children resulting from unions with African soldiers as a contamination of the white race, putting the blame on Jews for their presence in Germany.
The group also targets Turks who marry Jews. In a post on X on July 31, 2024, the group singled out a woman whose husband was identified as a Jew from Tel Aviv-Yafo, labeling her a “crypto Jew” and stating, “Our war is just beginning. Jews soon will no longer be able to laugh.”
In a clear indication that its members may readily resort to violence, the National Front advocates for the arming of citizens and shares videos featuring members training with firearms at shooting ranges. The group asserts that the possession of arms is both a right and a duty for every patriotic Turk, necessary to protect Turkish ethnicity. A message posted on Telegram on July 15, 2024, stated, “Every Turkish child must learn to use a gun and be ready to protect his ethnicity.”
They demand that Turkish women have more children, offering monetary rewards for each newborn, marriage credits and incentives for women who give birth to between four and eight babies. They claim this is the only way to address the stagnating Turkish population.
They have been promoting their ideology on social media platforms such as X and Telegram, with 1,289 followers on X and 1,191 followers on their Telegram channel as of September 21. Moreover, they publish an online magazine called Altay Mecmua.
The group has two specific channels, Nasyonalegitim and HitlerTürkçe, it says are for educational purposes that often feature Hitler’s videos, speeches and comments, generally derogatory content on Jews and even videos of lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan. It quotes Hitler’s remarks that “Atatürk was a teacher; Mussolini was his first and I his second student,” which was revealed in Harvard historian Stefan Ihrig’s research.
Their flag prominently features a wolf’s head, a signature symbol for nationalist groups in Turkey, at its center, set against a design resembling the Nazi flag. They also use a symbol inspired by Nazi Germany’s Reichsadler (imperial eagle), which originally included a swastika.
Members wear armbands featuring red, white and black stripes with a wolf’s head, reminiscent of those used by Nazi youths. In photos shared on social media, some members brandish Nazi flags adorned with swastikas, while others display their adopted symbols. They also greet one another with the Nazi salute, commonly known as the Hitler salute or Sieg Heil salute.
The group claims to adhere to what it calls Otonom Pasif Mücadele, or autonomous passive resistance, to ensure its survival while buying time to recruit new members. “If a member practices Autonomous Passive Resistance, they are motivated by causing harm to enemy elements through the smallest and least risky actions imaginable, while also seeking to establish themselves within the organization and reinforce a sense of trust,” the group explains.
As part of this strategy, the group paints graffiti on public walls, vandalizes banners and signs promoting the integration of migrant communities and stages protests in front of foreign consulates.
There have been alarming instances of how neo-Nazi ideology can incite violence in Turkey. A manifesto published by 18-year-old neo-Nazi Arda Küçükyetim before he perpetrated a knife attack in a café in Eskişehir bore striking similarities to the ideology of the National Front. Küçükyetim likened his targets to insects that needed to be cleansed from the earth, echoing banners displayed by the National Front that urged Turks to avoid “cockroaches,” a derogatory term referring to non-Turks.
“Politically, I could be described as a National Socialist, but in this Jew-controlled system and society, that doesn’t seem possible,” the attacker said in his manifesto. When apprehended by the police, he was found carrying two knives and an axe and was wearing a face mask and a tactical vest emblazoned with a neo-Nazi symbol.
Turkish authorities downplayed the incident, swiftly securing a gag order to prevent media coverage and attributing the attack to violent video games.
The group’s leader, Koçak, is believed to have been recruited by intelligence agency MIT while enrolled at the Army War School (Kara Harp Okulu), part of the National Defense University that trains elite staff officers for the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). After serving two years in the army, he left to establish the far-right group. He openly says that Hitler is a role model for him.
The lack of a serious crackdown on the group by the Erdogan government, despite numerous criminal complaints filed nationwide for incitement to hatred, violence and discrimination based on race, religion, gender or social group, suggests that it is being shielded by powerful entities within Turkish government institutions.
The intelligence agency’s goal appears to be using the group as a proxy to fulfill a future social engineering project, helping to shape national discourse, sustain a climate of fear and send a message to Turkey’s partners when necessary by leveraging this marginal group.
