A pro-government opposition in Turkey?

It was around 2014, at one of the last receptions of Abdullah Gül toward the end of his presidential term at the Çankaya Palace in Ankara, when it was still Turkey's presidential palace. A group of reporters had surrounded a minister or top bureaucrat to take their chances to find a bit of information.

There I saw Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), standing next to a table in a circle with a number of MHP deputies.

Over the years Bahçeli and I have been in a strictly journalist-politician relationship, which has always been conducted within the boundaries of politeness. For example, minutes after publicly denouncing me at an MHP group meeting in parliament as a defamer of the nationalist movement for writing articles in favor of harmonization with the EU in June 2004, we came face to face and Bahçeli asked me politely how I was. In 1997, when he was elected leader of his party after the passing away of its founding leader Alparslan Türkeş, I was the first journalist to convince this reserved politician to join a live show when I was the Ankara bureau chief of private broadcaster NTV. Later as the Ankara bureau chief of Sabah and Radikal, I also received a number of exclusive statements from him, and together with Fikret Bila managed to conduct some rare live interviews for CNN Türk. 

When I saw Bahçeli standing there in 2014 I wanted to say hello so I approached him. After exchanging a few courteous words and asking whether he would perhaps give another interview to the Hürriyet Daily News, he told me: "Mr. Yetkin, in the past there were nice TV shows. You used to invite us and squeeze us with questions, but at least we had the chance to get our voices heard." After a pause he continued: "Now you don't have...