Abdullah Levent Tüzel

In 1996, Tüzel became one of the founding members of the Labour Party (EMEP) and served as the party's leader until 1 June 2007, after which he resigned to contest the 2007 general election as an independent candidate. He was supported by the Thousand Hope Candidates bloc, formed of several small left-wing organisations that aimed to bypass the 10% election threshold by fielding candidates as independents. Running for election in İzmir's first electoral district, he failed to secure enough votes to win a seat in Parliament. He subsequently resumed his role as the leader of the Labour Party.

In the 2011 general election, Tüzel once again resigned from the Labour Party to contest the election as an independent, this time supported by the Labour, Democracy and Freedom Bloc. Contesting the election in İstanbul's third electoral district, he won a seat and became one of the 35 Bloc MPs elected to Parliament.[3]

In 2013, Tüzel joined the newly formed Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which had been formed by a coalition of left-wing political groups that had participated in the Peoples' Democratic Congress (HDK). The Labour Party was initially part of the HDP, though later withdrew over disagreements over the inclusion of Kurdish nationalist parties in the HDP. However, as a proponent of freeing Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Tüzel remained as a HDP MP and the Labour Party decided to support the HDP during the June 2015 general election, in which Tüzel was re-elected as an MP from third electoral district.[4]