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Turmoil in Germany's Eurosceptic AfD as leaders battle

BERLIN (Reuters) - A co-leader of the Eurosceptic party that has been siphoning votes from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives the last two years has attacked its founder Bernd Lucke as unqualified to lead the protest party. Merkel's conservatives have been hoping for an implosion in the Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, which has won seats in five state assemblies since August after climbing as high as 9 percent in German opinion polls. It was created in 2013 to oppose euro zone bailouts. Frauke Petry, who leads the AfD's right wing, told Die Welt newspaper that Lucke, a moderate, was no longer fit to lead the AfD after announcing this week plans to create a rival group of moderates called "Weckruf 2015 (Wake up call 2015). "He's disqualified himself to lead the party," Petry told Die Welt, adding she planned to run against him for the party leadership at a party congress next month. Recent polls show the AfD slumping to around the 5 percent threshold needed to enter the national parliament, which they just missed in 2013 only months after being founded by Lucke. Many other protest movements in Germany, such as the Pirates party, have soared in opinion polls at first before collapsing within a few years due to in-fighting. In a recent manifesto, right-wingers accused the AfD of hastily distancing itself from "civil protest movements", alluding to controversial anti-Islam protests, and of "cowardice and betraying our country's interests" instead of protesting against the "erosion of Germany's sovereignty and identity". The liberals accused the right-wingers of seeking to make the AfD a pure protest party bent on provocation. (Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum)