By Westerly Gorayeb and Nellie Peyton
Jonathan Power:The Man Closest to Medvedev
Talking to Igor Yurgens is probably as close to talking with Dmitri Medvedev as one can get without interviewing the Russian president himself. His influence is regarded by those who follow the inner workings of the Kremlin as immense.
By disposition a liberal academic, committed to the rule of law, he runs his own think tank which gives him the research and intellectual firepower to influence his close friend. Yurgens had something to do with clearing the path for the president to give his first on-the-record interview to the remarkably brave and independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which had four star reporters, including Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down between 2001 and 2009.
I recently interviewed Yurgens and we talked about Georgia, where the Russian army defeated Georgian forces that precipitated an unnecessary war last August by invading its neighbor, the pro-Russian mini-state of South Ossetia.
I’ve long maintained that although Russia was acting within its rights in repulsing the unprovoked Georgian attack, it used a sledge hammer to kill a wasp. The Russian military used tactics that not only overwhelmed the Georgian army but created extensive destruction and civilian suffering. They seemed to be unnecessarily brutal.
“Yes, maybe the Russian reaction was too heavy,” replied Yurgens. “And there was no attempt at public relations before the event to explain what and why the Russians were doing. But then we always make the mistake of being too heavy handed. But if Medvedev hadn’t given the order to intervene—and remember the military had worked themselves up—Medvedev would have been a lame duck president for the rest of his term.”
Within a couple of days of the invasions, Yurgens rushed to Washington for back-channel talks with the U.S. State Department. He told me that he “felt deceived by [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice. The U.S. did know a week before the invasion, because the Russians made sure that the 800 American soldiers stationed in Georgia were not in the way in case we had to intervene. Also both American and Russian intelligence could see and follow the movement of the Georgian army. So the U.S. had the opportunity to intervene and tell the Georgians not to go ahead with their planned attack on South Ossetia.”
“But by then within the administration, opinion, including that of [President George W.] Bush and Rice, who a month before had publicly warned the Georgian leader [Mikhail] Saakashvili not to initiate a war, had shifted in [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s direction. I got this impression from Bill Burns, who I’ve known for a long time, the number two in the State Department and a very informed ex-ambassador to Moscow.”
“Cheney, in effect, undermined Bush and Rice. He knew that right-wing academics, ex-American diplomats and others, who journeyed to Georgia in the preceding weeks, had dropped hints to Saakashvili that if it came to a showdown Bush and Rice would be compelled to support the Georgians, despite their earlier warnings. Saakashvili was emboldened to do what he had long planned. He thought he could get away with it. And he thought by poking us in the eye he would strengthen his weakening position at home, where he was becoming less democratic and more ruthless by the day.”
Back home in Moscow, Yurgens says that Medvedev wants to heal the breach with both the European Union and America. Medvedev “likes” the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, who has assumed power “with new ideas,” and thinks that if “our institutions [change] then we won’t depend on the subjective,” Yurgens said.
Michael Deibert: A Note on Violence at Jawaharlal Nehru University
In early 2007, while reporting on the conflict in India-controlled Kashmir, I sat at a small tea shop in Srinagar discussing the political trajectory of this troubled region with two friends—a Kashmiri attorney named Malik Aijaz Ahmad and a student named Idrees Kanth.
I saw in Kashmir, as I have in other countries such as Haiti and Côte d’Ivoire, how the majority of the populace was caught in a vicious war of attrition between opposing sides with very little recourse or protection. Witnessing the situation in Kashmir led me to write my first long-form feature for World Policy Journal, the flagship publication of the New York-based World Policy Institute, where I have recently been named a senior fellow.
During my time in India, I also became aware of the country’s complicated religious and ethnic dynamic. On one hand, this saw frequent and repeated episodes of discrimination and violence against the country’s Muslim minority, including the murder of some 2,000 people—the vast majority of them Muslims—in a bout of ethnic cleansing in the state of Gujarat in early 2002. On the other hand, representatives of the Muslim community in India could also often behave in ways that reeked of intolerance, such as when members of the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) political party, including Indian lawmakers, attacked the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen as she attempted to speak at a book release event in the city of Hyderabad in 2007.
A recent email from Idrees, studying at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, demonstrates vividly to me that these tensions evident in Indian society as a whole do not shy away from rearing their heads even in a university setting. If communal violence, such as that which India witnessed in Gujarat in 2002, is also allowed to flourish in places of higher learning such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, it is a worrisome sign for a country that this month undertook another exercise in its vast experiment with democracy.
Jonathan Power: Where To Go on Holiday…. Travel Tips from a “Mad Dad”
My eighteen-year-old daughter asked me recently about where she can safely travel when she finishes school in June and starts a three-month holiday before going to university in September.
“The Muslim countries or Japan,” I replied.
She was quite taken aback. At school her friends talk about the United States, Australia, Thailand, or South America. But I emphatically said, “no, I don’t want you to go there,” and then explained why her mother and I felt so strongly.
I pulled out the figures from the new 2009 United Nations World Development Report, which compares murder rates from all the countries. Every country—apart from those in the European Union—measure rape, theft, break-ins, and other crimes in different ways. Some figures are accurate, some seem like they’ve been drawn out of a hat.
But most countries report their murder rate pretty accurately. There may be under-counting in places with civil strive, as in Sri Lanka, where murder and the killings of war can blur into each other. Yet, even in most difficult cases, like Russia, press reports can help balance the official figures.
To cut a long story short, I would gladly let her go to Egypt, which has the world’s lowest murder rate—at 0.4 per 100,000 population, although Japan closely follows at 0.5. Other Muslim, mainly Arab, countries follow next, all with less than 1 murder per 100,000 people: the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai and Oman at 0.6; Saudi Arabia at 0.9; Bahrain at 1; and Jordan at 0.9. Indonesia, with all its political troubles, has but 1.1 murders per 100,000 citizens.
Outside the Arab countries, the Scandinavian countries are the safest. Norway and Denmark come in at 0.8 and Iceland at 1. Sweden breaks the Scandinavian success rate with a poor 2.4, but in Europe, Holland and Ireland score well too.
So, daughter: there’s the list that I approve—and that your mother has been persuaded to approve. Ironically, for us, many of countries with high murder rates are of a Christian heritage—the United States at 5.6 murders per 100,000; Mexico at 13; Russia at 19.9; South Africa at 47.5; and Colombia at a staggering 62.7.
We can put India on the positive side of the ledger: it’s a big, very diverse country, and parts of it, like West Bengal and its capital, Calcutta, are very safe despite its rating of 3.7 murders per 100,000 population.
You might argue that I’ve underestimated, bent, or stretched the statistics—everyone knows there have been many killings of tourists in Egypt—because I’m not including terrorist killings. Egypt although, I admit, has real risks. So let’s strike that out. (It reminds me of Northern Ireland during the “troubles,” when it had the lowest crime rate in Europe but the fighting was pretty horrendous.)
Your “mad dad” has been to them all, I know, but journalists are stupid and take too many risks.
Jodi Liss: Breaking the “Resource Curse” by Getting Contracts Right
Many countries in the developing world look to energy and mining to bring in foreign investment. The contracts that these countries sign with extraction companies often offer lop-sided terms when it comes to money, transparency, information, or in certain cases, environmental protection to the host country—all of which heighten the problems of the resource curse.
The International Senior Law Project (ISLP) is a non-profit organization which volunteers world-class legal counsel globally on economic development, human rights, and access to justice. The group works with governments who need their services but are too poor to pay, and partners with large established non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to bring their skills to developing world civil society groups. They also offer commercial law skills training. They have worked on projects to deal with extraction related problems in several poor countries, including in Mongolia and Liberia.
ISLP’s roster includes about 600 lawyers from the United States, Canada, and other countries. Jean Berman, the executive director, says, “We’ve been very lucky in finding the perfect lawyers for the situation.”
Joseph Bell is the Secretary of the Board for ISLP. He is also a senior law partner at Hogan and Hartson, and chair of the Advisory Board at Revenue Watch Institute, an NGO which works to counter the resource curse. His background is in commercial and regulatory practice, focusing on energy and mining. Recently, he led the ISLP team(s) that renegotiated several important contracts between the government of Liberia and interested multinational corporations, resulting in a great improvement of terms for the government.
The following is an interview with him on negotiating with extraction companies for the world’s poorest countries.
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Jodi Liss (JL): What problems do developing countries face when negotiating contracts with these huge multinational corporations?
Joseph Bell (JB): There’s the problem of asymmetry—in knowledge, information, capacity—between the government and the company. Some countries recognize this and hire outside counsel, which sometimes can help.
JL: Do these countries have the existing legal frameworks to guide these contracts?
Obama’s First 100 Days — John Delury: North Korea
John Delury’s article “North Korea: 20 Years of Solitude” appeared in the winter “Dear Mr. President” issue of World Policy Journal. His grade for the new administration’s first 100 days follows this update.
President Barack Obama’s policy team is making inroads on a less hostile, more direct relationship with states like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. The manifestations may look ad hoc—a friendly video message; conference sideline handshakes; partial lifting of travel restrictions; dispatch of envoys to a rarely-visited foreign capital. But the sum total indicates a new spirit animating American foreign policy toward troublesome, alienated, or “rogue” countries. A kind of axis of engagement seems to be taking shape.
There is one noticeable exception: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), a spoke in the wheel of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil.” One hundred days into the Obama Age, it hardly feels like the beginning of a new era in U.S.-North Korea relations. Considering the extremely narrow channels of communication between the two countries, there is ample room for misunderstanding, conflict, and perception gap, even in so short a time. Foreign policy elites in Washington and Pyongyang may be telling themselves very different stories of what’s happened since January.
How would North Korea’s ruling elite evaluate Obama’s first 100 days, and what questions are they asking themselves about this new American leader?
Transition politics and envoy diplomacy in the early days of the Obama administration may have sent Pyongyang the signal that any new departure in U.S.-North Korea relations, for better or worse, will come at North Korea’s initiative. In fact, day one of the Obama era was a disappointment for the DPRK since the president’s inauguration team snubbed an unusual North Korean request to send an envoy to the inauguration ceremony. The rejection barely made headlines and it seemed prudent at the time for a young progressive president to not appear coddling of tyrants.
But in retrospect, the White House may have squandered an easy opportunity to give face to Pyongyang, opening the door for engagement and respect, without giving anything concrete away. Pyongyang showed initiative in wanting to send an emissary to witness the historic moment of Obama’s inauguration; Obama’s team may have mistaken this opportunity for one of many to come, rather than for the litmus test that—in the eyes of Pyongyang—they failed.
From Pyongyang’s perspective, the second negative indicator was the relative delay in appointing a special representative on the North Korean issue.
Two days after inauguration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden personally announced, with great fanfare, the appointment of a special envoy for Middle East peace and special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan. But a special representative for North Korean policy was not announced for another month, during which time North Korea experts warned of the importance of staying ahead of North Korea diplomatically, and obviating Pyongyang’s need for attention-grabbing brinkmanship.
The appointment of Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, a highly-respected diplomat who had recently traveled to Pyongyang, was itself second-guessed, even in South Korea, for the fact that he was keeping his day job as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. At the time of his appointment as Af–Pak rep, Richard Holbrooke was serving as chairman of the Asia Society—where I work—and it would have been inconceivable that he carry on in that capacity. The delayed appointment of a half-time envoy to North Korea must have had a deflating effect for anyone high-up in Pyongyang who hoped for “change.”
The third sign to Pyongyang that there was nothing terribly new in Obama’s approach to the peninsula was Clinton’s Asian tour.
The Secretary sent well-crafted, friendly, and respectful bilateral messages in Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing. East Asia lauded her trip as a resounding success. But one casualty of her astute bilateralism was the message received in Pyongyang. Clinton met with the families of abductees in Japan and ruminated on the death of Kim Jong Il with reporters on her flight to Seoul—stepping on two “third rails” of North Korean diplomacy. Emphasizing the importance of Japan and South Korea—both of whose governments are locked in hostility with North Korea—Clinton’s trip did little to assuage North Korean insecurities, or generate optimism about a new relationship with the United States.
Yet, Washington, already suffering Pyongyang fatigue from the back and forth of the Six Party Talks, tells a very different story. The North Koreans just don’t seem ready to be engaged. If this were a schoolyard fight, the State Department spokesman would be forgiven for crying out—“but he started it!”
Not long into the new president’s term, satellite imagery detected suspicious activity at the rocket launch site on North Korea’s northwest coast. Pyongyang announced plans on February 24 to launch a satellite rocket, which three of the six parties immediately pre-condemned as a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution banning the DPRK from activities related to its ballistic missile program.
Three weeks later, Pyongyang announced it had taken legal steps to make its satellite launch fully compliant with international laws and norms governing the use of space (I argued that Obama cut his losses, defuse the tension, and not let the launch derail peninsula diplomacy).
Washington tried to stay cool, even as its main allies in the region, Tokyo and Seoul, threatened to punish North Korea for a launch. In the immediate lead-up to the launch, Obama’s deputies offered carrots and sticks—National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair called for “international opprobrium,” while Bosworth held out the bait of “direct talks” if Pyongyang would call off their launch at the last minute.
Of course, the North Korean government went ahead with its launch, timed to tear at the coattails of Obama’s Prague speech on nuclear arms control. The president cited North Korea’s actions as evidence of the need for an enhanced non-proliferation regime:
“Just this morning, we were reminded again of why we need a new and more rigorous approach to address this threat. North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action—not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response—(applause)—now is the time for a strong international response, and North Korea must know that the path to security and respect will never come through threats and illegal weapons. All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that’s why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course.”
The president’s language indicates that he gets what the North Koreans are after—security and respect. But it’s too bad Obama’s attention was drawn to North Korea in the context of missile and nukes, reinforcing the narrow definition of the problem, which virtually ensures there will be no solution (standing “shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans” is a sure way to ensure anything but their changing course).
Obama has a rather unique intuition about conflict resolution, a subtle grasp of the ways history and ideology can imprison individuals and communities in mutual contempt, whereas recognizing the validity of conflicting values can lead to reconciliation and progress. Those instincts would serve him well if applied to the deep sources of conflict on the Korean peninsula. But with the domestic economy teetering and the Taliban on the outskirts of Islamabad, Obama probably just wishes Pyongyang could hang tight for a bit.
He might also be calculating that it would be prudent to focus his engagement capital on those “pariah” states that are somewhat less provocative. Does trying to bring North Korea into the unofficial “Axis of Engagement” jeopardize efforts elsewhere, leaving Obama open to attack for being too soft? Where is the domestic constituency in the United States that would support forward-looking American initiative? Why antagonize Tokyo and Seoul with proactive engagement toward the DPRK, when Pyongyang seems to be flouting UN authority? And is there anyone in Pyongyang capable of requiting American engagement, or is a sickly Kim Jong Il increasingly captive to a hard-line military oligarchy with no interest in economic and political opening?
These are among the questions Obama is likely asking himself, in so far as he has time and inclination to mull over the Korean peninsula at all.
The central argument of my World Policy Journal “Letter to the President” was that Obama should focus on finding a proactive and creative way to solve the underlying problem with North Korea: its isolation—political, economic, and cultural—from so much of the world community, and its abnormal and antagonistic relations with the United States. He and Clinton certainly have the requisite talent and knowledge on their foreign policy team to devise a comprehensive strategy of engagement but the mission needs to be defined as such.
American foreign policy has the great capacity to initiate a change of course and transform its relationship with an adversary. To wait for Pyongyang to initiate the change is futile, dangerous and tragic. It’s up to Obama to turn things around.
For his first 100 days, he deserves a grade of…
Obama’s First 100 Days — Federico Manfredi: Afghanistan
Federico Manfredi’s article “Rethinking U.S. Policy in Afghanistan” appeared in the winter “Dear Mr. President” issue of World Policy Journal. His grade for the new administration’s first 100 days follows this update.
In his first 100 days, President Barack Obama has been on the right track in dealing with both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has emphasized that the main interest of the United States in the region is making sure that Al Qaeda cannot attack the United States, its interests, and its allies, thus returning a sense of purpose to a mission that was sinking under the weight of nation building and counterinsurgency.
Secondly, while the previous administration illogically handled U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan separately, Obama chose to integrate the two, given that the Taliban insurgency has been spilling back and forth across a border that is poorly marked and practically impossible to monitor. This move will certainly increase coordination between Washington, Kabul, and Islamabad.
Even more importantly, Obama has declared himself willing to reach out to the moderate factions within the Taliban movement and has stressed that the United States must devise a sound exit strategy rather than follow the current pattern of perpetual drift. For all these reasons, Obama deserves praise, especially since he faces opposition in Washington from people who do not understand the realities on the ground in Pashtun territories and still see negotiating with the Taliban as anathema.
While Obama has already passed the challenging stage of telling the American people that he is willing to negotiate with the Taliban, he has yet to deliver the message in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama should address the Pashtun people clearly and directly, spelling out the security interests of the United States and making a careful distinction between those Taliban whose main concern is Pashtun self-rule and those who support international terrorism.
But Obama must also make it clear that he understands the interest of traditional Pashtun communities, and those of the Taliban militants that control them—which are quite different from the interests of Al Qaeda.
The Taliban movement is not monolithic, and if Mullah Omar and other radical commanders are not interested in dialogue, others will step in to fill their shoes. Most importantly, the Pashtun people would recognize that Obama offered the Taliban a reasonable deal, and the stubbornness of those who refuse to negotiate would only undermine their popular support and isolate them politically.
The time is ripe for a bold new approach to counterterrorism, one that stresses knowledge and reasoning over impulsiveness and military bravado.
Convincing the Taliban that it is in their interest to halt their insurgent campaign and turn against Al Qaeda will not be an easy task. But this would be the most reasonable policy the United States could adopt to stabilize both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and thus undermine Al Qaeda’s presence in the region.
For his first 100 days, President Obama deserves a grade of…
Obama’s First 100 Days — Stephen Schlesinger: The UN
Stephen Schlesinger’s article “A New Administration and the UN” appeared in the winter “Dear Mr. President” issue of World Policy Journal. His grade for the new administration’s first 100 days follows this update.
President Barack Obama has dramatically re-established American relations with the United Nations in his first 100 days. His acclaimed multilateral outlook on international relations, his willingness to listen to foreign leaders rather than lecture them, his admission of “mistakes” by the United States on issues like torture, the economy, the Iraq war, and other global matters—and his general popularity around the world—have created an entirely new atmosphere in the United Nations building.
In the seventh week of his administration, he held his first meeting with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the White House, a cordial and highly supportive event. Then, with several specific steps, Obama made crystal clear his re-engagement with the world body:
First, he approved the United States joining the newly created Human Rights Council rather than staying outside of it, in order to reorient the body toward its goal of enforcing the essential civil rights for citizens in all states.
Second, he asked Congress to appropriate $836 million to pay up our peacekeeping obligations which we have shamefully refused in the past to fulfill.
Third, he made a new commitment to helping stop climate change—a key issue at the UN these days.
Fourth, he reversed by executive order the Bush administration policy of denying U.S. funds to family planning programs at the UN’s Population Fund.
Fifth, he renewed and expanded funding to both UNICEF and UNESCO, both organizations long neglected by Washington in the past.
Sixth, he publicly endorsed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, among other crucial UN treaties, and pledged to participate vigorously in the UN’s upcoming 2010 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the latter of which the previous administration disparaged.
Seventh, he publicly embraced the Millennium Development goals, which Bush viewed with disdain.
Obama, however, did duck out of the Durban conference on racism and he has so far not said much about the International Criminal Court. Additionally, he has not been heavily proactive on the Darfur crisis, as of yet.
But, in my view, for his first 100 days, he deserves a grade of…
Jonathan Power: Can Obama Better Ronald Reagan on Nuclear Arms Control?
A 50 percent reduction in the nuclear arsenal of Russia and the United States was proposed by President Barack Obama this past weekend. And President Dmitry Medvedev seems to be receptive. What neither have mentioned is that we have been here before—with presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
But, in a bit of infrequently told history, this earlier attempt at a grand disarmament was undermined by a key adviser on the American side and short sightedness on the Soviet side.
Although Russia and the United States keep their missiles on hair-trigger alert, there is almost nobody in the higher reaches of policy making on either side who thinks they would ever be used. Indeed, this has been so for years.
Doubts about the reasoning for the vast number of nuclear weapons in America’s stockpile go back a long way. President Dwight Eisenhower, the former World War II commander in chief, observed that, “military statements of nuclear weapons requirements were grossly inflated.”
Indeed, nuclear stockpiles seem to have always been governed by a calculus of confusion. Robert McNamara, the former defense secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, once replied to a question posed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Rhodes (whose latest book, Arsenal of Folly, is the best single read on the subject) by saying, “Each individual decision to increase the number of nuclear weapons seemed rational at the time but the result was insane.”
Even Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, certainly no dove, while negotiating with the Soviet Union in Moscow, said at a press conference, “One of the questions we have to ask ourselves as a country is what in the name of God is nuclear strategic superiority?”
Ronald Reagan was the first American president to break through the murk and horror of the nuclear weapons debate. Many have judged Reagan as a bit of a simpleton. But now, thanks in part to good biographies on him, we may have a more nuanced view. Yes, he wasn’t an intellectual, but his political instincts were fine-tuned and turned out to be right more often than the counsels of his experts. Within his administration it was he who felt the strongest about nuclear abolition. Jack Matlock, Jr., who served as Reagan’s principal adviser on Soviet affairs, said in one interview that he “suspected that Reagan would not retaliate in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack.”
Samuel F. Mueller: Turkey’s Disappearing Opposition
Since the religiously-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in Turkey in 2002, Islam and secularism have become particularly controversial topics.
Political and academic debates are now more often than not framed by questions such as whether a religiously-based party can seriously support a secular democratic order, or even whether Turkey might become a second Iran.
Questions about the relationship between religion and politics and the ideology of the AKP are surely important, and many AKP policies must be seriously critiqued. However, these debates do not address the key issues in Turkey’s democratization process.
The basic and most crucial problem for Turkish democracy is not political Islam, but the lack of a serious political opposition—a must for every democracy. The recent local elections on March 29 brought no substantial change to the dangerously unsettled balance of power.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the AKP, is a goal-oriented pragmatist who knows how to use religious political language to reach the masses. Islamic symbolism frames Erdogan’s politics—he abstains from alcoholic beverages at state receptions, for example.
However, Erdogan’s strength is that he has long been aware that while populist gestures win plaudits, sound policies win votes. When Erdogan was mayor of Istanbul in the mid 1990s his popular support rested not on his attempts to introduce, for example, gender-separated seating arrangements in public transit, but on his efforts to improve urban infrastructure.
Today, the AKP scores points with a neo-liberal economic approach and international-focused policies. Islam is thereby a means of communication and an articulation of specific political interests. This religious symbolic frame should not be confused with an attempt to turn Turkey in a theocracy. An Islamic state in Turkey is not a political goal in itself and therefore not something we need to worry about—at least not now.
However, the balance of political power is a major concern. The AKP has become so powerful that we must worry about the democratic culture of Turkey’s party system. Currently, the AKP holds 338 of the 545 seats in parliament. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) holds the second biggest bloc, though only 98 seats. On the local level, though the AKP lost some votes in the recent elections to the CHP and missed its target of 47 percent, it remains basically unchallenged.
Apart from the CHP, there is no one else to challenge the AKP’s predominance. But why does the main opposition party lack any real chance at unseating the reigning power?