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%.

So, after purging a reluctant old guard from the party’s candidate list, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has put out an election manifesto that appears tailored to woo voters who previously rejected the party — namely, ethnic Kurds and liberals. The CHP’s election slogan for the June 12 polls: “Turkey will breathe freely.”

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