Monday, April 25, 2011

Turkey’s Opposition Makeover

"Turkey’s Opposition Makeover

By Ayla Albayrak

Even critics of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party are admitting to pleasant surprise at the party’s new election manifesto.

For the last two elections, the party, generally known by its CHP acronym, had positioned itself as a hard-line secular and nationalist bulwark against the Islamist threat it claimed the ruling Justice and Development party, or AKP, posed to Turkey’s secular constitution. It didn’t work. At the last election in 2007, the AKP won 47% of the vote to the CHP’s 21%."

More:Turkey’s Opposition Makeover - Emerging Europe Real Time - WSJ