BERLIN, May 25 (UPI) -- Turkey's main opposition party selected an anti-corruption crusader likened to Mahatma Gandhi as its new leader, fueling hopes among the Left that the dominant role of the ruling Islamist party can be broken in next year's elections.
Nearly 1,200 members of the Republican People's Party, or CHP, over the weekend elected as their new chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a 61-year-old party official known for his fierce campaigning against corruption.
Dubbed "Turkey's Gandhi" for his modest manners and a resemblance to the Indian political and spiritual leader, Kilicdaroglu took over from Deniz Baykal, who -- after 18 years at the helm of the CHP -- resigned earlier this month because of a sex scandal.
In his first speech to party colleagues, Kilicdaroglu vowed to fight for social justice and against public fraud. He has also vowed to bring down the 10 percent electoral quota, which bars smaller parties -- including those representing the Kurdish minority -- from entering parliament.
"We will fight corruption in a real sense and bring injustice to an end," Kilicdaroglu, a secular Alevi Muslim from eastern Turkey, was quoted as saying by Deutsche Welle. "We will combat unemployment and poverty from the very beginning."
These few sentences constitute a major policy change for the CHP.
Because of elitist politics and a reluctance to support ethnic minorities, the CHP during the past years lost the support of its traditional electoral base -- working class Turks -- to the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of Prime Minister Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Contesting the Islamists has been difficult for the Turkish Left because it has been disunited by quarrels. In 2007, the AKP won a landslide 47 percent of the poll and has since been ruling Turkey with a single-party government.
The latest setback to the opposition was when Baykal had to resign over a video allegedly showing him having sex with a former female aide who is now a lawmaker. Yet observers say Kilicdaroglu's nomination is the chance for a fresh start for the CHP, which was founded in 1923 by Kemal Ataturk, the creator of the modern Turkish state.
Kilicdaroglu has forced the resignation of two senior AKP officials when he led fraud investigations against them. He campaigns harshly for political transparency in Turkey, where corruption in political circles still exists. Before the CHP party congress, Kilicdaroglu unveiled what he said were all his family assets on his Web site.
"The people see in him a politician with a clean slate and a pure character, he is Turkey's white knight," Gulay Kizilocak, an expert with the Center for Studies on Turkey, a think tank in Essen, Germany, told United Press International in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Moreover, the Left seems to be willing to support him: Rahsan Ecevit, wife of Bulent Ecevit, the late Socialist prime minister, attended Saturday's CHP congress after having cut ties with the party for many years.
"I accept Mr. Kilicdaroglu's nomination as a real change and believe that it will open new horizons for the CHP," Ecevit told NTV television.
Kizilocak said she is confident that Kilicdaroglu will turn the Left into a real contender in next year's elections.
"The AKP is experiencing a downward trend, while the CHP under Kilicdaroglu is sure to gain votes," she said. "So I don't believe that the AKP will be able to head another one-party government after next year's election."
