Take right to exit

No, it is not your navigator giving you directions while you are driving. It is the way politics are shaping up in the world these days. Most recently, the U.S. and the Netherlands both decided to move a little to the right.

Bulgaria, meanwhile, managed to keep in its lane, and it looks like Germany will do so too. The situation in Turkey is more intriguing still: Part of its center-right may be more left that right today.

A small but important tide has been rising in the towns of Anatolia since last year. Meral Akşener, a former interior minister and a very experienced politician in the center-right, has been calling for a change of guard in the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Current MHP head Devlet Bahçeli and his deputies saw this as a mutiny and kicked all dissident voices - such as Sinan Oğan, Ümit Özdağ, Koray Aydın and Akşener - out of the party.

One positive thing about this referendum period's disproportionate campaign and coverage bias is that it has forced all the opposition parties and groups to come together to avoid conflict. Akşener and her group of naysayers are banned from all mainstream TV channels. So instead they go from town to town, village to village. 

Oğan and Özdağ, a respected academic, are facing incredible hurdles and attacks from Bahçeli loyalists during their trips into the heartland of Anatolia. After last weekend's tumultuous visit to Yozgat, a nationalist "castle," Özdağ and Oğan accused the MHP, not the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) for this situation. Regardless of the result of the referendum in Turkey, it seems a new center-right will be rising on the shoulders of Akşener, Oğan, Özdağ, etc.

But the entire debate on why Turkey is going to the polls is still an enigma...