Republican People's Party (Turkey)
The Republican People's Party (Turkish: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi or CHP) is a social democratic party in Turkey.
It is the leading opposition party of Turkey, with 171 out of 550 seats in the Great National Assembly of Turkey.
It was founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and was the sole political party in Turkey until 1946. It is currently led by Deniz Baykal.
The CHP have their strongest levels of support among secular Turks, particularly in the strongly secular regions in Thrace, and the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, among the business, civil service and military élites and among certain religious minorities such as the Alevi, Christians and Jews. The latter two groups and business have moved to the CHP more in recent years, with the rise of the democratic Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and weakening of the secular centre-right.
Since the dramatic General Election of 2002, the CHP has been racked by internal power struggles, and has been outclassed by the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the local elections of 2004, its overall share of the vote held, largely through mopping up anti-Erdogan votes among former supporters of smaller left-wing and secular right-wing parties, but was badly beaten by the AKP across the country, losing strongholds such as the staunchly secular holiday city of Antalya.
The party is also hampered by tensions between its internationalist social-democratic and nationalist étatist wings.
See also: Politics of Turkey, List of political parties in Turkey.
