People's Democracy Party

People's Democracy Party (Turkish: Halkın Demokrasi Partisi, HADEP) was a Kurdish[1][2] political party in Turkey. It was founded on 11 May 1994[3] by lawyer Murat Bozlak. It had distanced itself clearly from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).[4]

The party had 2 chairmen, Murat Bozlak who chaired the party for two terms between 1994 and 1999 and 2000 until its closure in 2003 and Ahmet Turan Demir, who served as party chairman from September 1998 to November 1999.[5] During the electoral campaign towards the parliamentary elections of 1995, the political environment was hostile to the HADEP and the Welfare Party (RP) thought that HADEP was only permitted to compete to limit the influence of the RP.[6] Anyway, following the elections, suspicions of fraud emerged, as a HADEP candidate allegedly didn't even receive one vote in his village of origin, also not from his wife.[7] 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.[8] The party came severely under pressure after Italy refused to extradite Abdullah Öcalan to Turkey. Dozens of party members were detained and accused for having supported a country wide hunger strike in protest of the Turkish approach towards the Kurdish Turkish conflict.[9] In January 1999, 41 HADEP members who were detained in November 1998 were released but 4 others remained in custody.[10] In the electoral campaign towards the general and local elections of April 1999, it faced opposition from the Turkish authorities. The rally planned in Diyarbakır the week before the elections was prohibited and thousands of people were detained.[11] At the time, the party hoped to become an important factor in Turkish politics.[11] But despite the oppression,[11] the party was successful in the local elections of April 1999, an won 37 mayorships, including the one of Diyarbakır.[12] HADEP politicians and supporters were often detained, as happened before a manifestation organized by the HADEP on the 1 September 2001 in memory of World Peace Day.[13] As the HADEP was repeatedly accused of supporting terror, in 2002 it received the support from the Socialist International (SI) who demanded from Turkey that it provides a framework for a fair environment for a pluralistic democracy.[14] The party was banned by the Constitutional Court on 13 March 2003 on the grounds that it allegedly supported the PKK.[15] The courts leading judge Mustafa Bumin stated that the party was a threat concerning the indivisibility of the Turkish Republic[16] As a result, 46 politicians from the HADEP were banned from politics for 5 years.[17] Greece, the holder of the EU presidency at the time, issued a statement criticizing the events.[17]

The party was succeeded by the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP),[18] which was joined by 35 mayors of the former HADEP on the 26 March 2003.[19][20]

In 2010, the 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.[21]