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Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=201068
Turkish Ruling Party Faces Election Challenge
(Jerusalem Post) Soner Cagaptay - Can the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's main opposition movement and the inheritor of Kemal Ataturk's legacy of a Western and secular country, challenge the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the upcoming June 2011 elections? In May, the CHP elected a new charismatic leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who recently won enough support to form a new party assembly composed of fresh new faces. For the first time since 2002, the AKP faces a real challenge from a renewed opposition that is forward-looking, with a vision to create a new liberal and pro-Western Turkey. The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.