People's Democracy Party

People’s Democracy Party Kurdish: Turkish: Halkın Demokrasi Partisi, HADEP
Leader	Murat Bozlak
Founded	May 1994
Dissolved	March 13, 2003
Succeeded by	Democratic People's Party (Turkey)
Ideology	Social democracy Feminism Green politics Kurdish nationalism
Political position	Centre-left
Politics of Turkey Political parties Elections

People’s Democracy Party (Turkish: Halkın Demokrasi Partisi, HADEP) was a Kurdish nationalist^[1][2] political party in Turkey. It was founded in May 1994 by lawyer Murat Bozlak. The party distinguished itself from the PKK.

At the party congress in June 1996 masked men dropped the Turkish flag and raised the PKK flag. As a result of this, all HADEP members were arrested.^[3] The party survived the 1999 closure case but was banned by the Constitutional Court on 13 March 2003 on the grounds that it allegedly supported the PKK.^[4]

It was succeeded by the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP).^[5]

In 2010, party's dissolution was unanimously found by European Court of Human Rights to be contrary to Article 11 (freedom of association) of the European Convention on Human Rights.^[6]

Notes

1. Christoph Marcinkowski, The Islamic World and the West: Managing Religious and Cultural Identities in the Age of Globalisation, LIT Verlag Münster, 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-80001-5, p. 168.
2. Lenore G. Martin, New Frontiers in Middle East Security, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, ISBN 978-0-312-23992-3, p. 140.
3. Güney 2002, p. 125.
4. Moghadam 2007, p. 86.
5. McDowall 2003, p. 463.
6. Judgment in case 28003/03

References

• Güney, Aylin (2002). "The People's Democracy Party". Turkish Studies. 3 (1): 122–137.
• Moghadam, Valentine M. (2007). From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women's Participation, Movements, and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-3111-1.
• McDowall, David. (2003) A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003), p. 463. ISBN 978-1850434160