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Labour Party Emek Partisi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chairman | Seyit Aslan |
| Founded | 25 November 1996 |
| Headquarters | Fevzi Çakmak 1 Sokak No: 15/5,Ankara, Turkey |
| Membership(2025) |  5,004[1] |
| Ideology | Communism Marxism–Leninism Hoxhaism Anti-revisionism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| National affiliation | HDK Labour and Freedom Alliance (Since 2022) |
| International affiliation | ICMLPO IMCWP[2] |
| Colours | Red andYellow |
| Grand National Assembly | 2 / 600 |
| Municipal Assemblies | 11 / 20,952 |
| Website | |
| www.emep.org | |
TheLabour Party (Turkish:Emek Partisi, EMEP) is aTurkishcommunist party founded in 1996. Its chairperson is Seyit Aslan.
Its ideological stance is in accord with the line of ICMLPO. In its programme, EMEP identifies its goal as creating an "Independent and Democratic Turkey". The party publishes the dailyEvrensel (lit. 'Universal'). The party is one of the participants in the People's Democratic Congress, a political initiative instrumental in founding thePeoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in 2012.[3] It is one of the few political parties in Turkey thatrecognizes the Armenian genocide.[4][5]
The party was founded as Labour Party (Emek Partisi, EP) on 25 November 1996. Due to a ban by theConstitutional Court, it was refounded as Party of Labour (Emeğin Partisi, EMEP) the same year. In 2005, the original name was reinstalled after theEuropean Court of Human Rights held the ban was a violation of theEuropean Convention on Human Rights.[6]
The Labour Party (EMEP) had been a member of thePeoples' Democratic Congress and had participated in the establishment of theHDP in 2012. However, the EMEP released a statement on 17 June 2014, announcing a split with the HDP.[7] The split was attributed to the restructuring of the Kurdish nationalistPeace and Democracy Party into a local-only party under the new nameDemocratic Regions Party (DBP), while the BDP's parliamentary caucus would be integrated into the HDP. This would, in turn, require the HDP's constitution to be altered in order to ensure greater compliance and conformity with the ideology of the BDP. This caused the EMEP to formally announce their secession from the HDP, but stated that they would continue their participation with the HDK. Despite the split, the Labour Party endorsed the HDP presidential candidateSelahattin Demirtaş for the2014 presidential election and also announced that they would not be running in theJune 2015 general election.
The party participated in the1999 General Elections, getting 51,756 votes, i.e. 0.17% of the total vote. In 2007, EMEP became a constituent party in theThousand Hopes Alliance formed aroundDEHAP. The aim of the alliance was to present its candidates to theTurkish Parliament as independents in order to circumvent the electoral threshold of 10%[8] which had been introduced in theTurkish Constitution in 1982.[9] At the2007 General Elections, the party gathered 26,574 votes, or 0.08% of the popular vote.
The party took part in theLabour and Freedom Alliance established on 25 August 2022 under the leadership of HDP for the2023 Turkish general election. The party leadership of HDP has announced that it will hand over active political work to theGreen Left Party (YSP) due to theclosure case against it. On March 24, 2023, the alliance members HDP, theLabourist Movement Party (EHP) and theSocial Freedom Party (TÖP) decided to enter the 2023 elections from the lists of the YSP. Later, on April 6, 2023, EMEP also decided to enter the elections from the lists of the YSP.Sevda Karaca was elected MP forGaziantep from 1st place andİskender Bayhan was elected MP forIstanbul 3rd District.[10]
Selma Gürkan was elected the chairperson of the EMEP in 2011. On 22 November 2020, Ercüment Akdeniz was elected the party's chairperson. Following Akdeniz's resignation, which he announced on social media, due to issues between him and the party's top management during the2023 Turkish general elections, Selma Gürkan replaced him.[11]
TheEvrensel newspaper was founded on 7 June 1995. The magazinesEvrensel Kültür (lit. 'Universal Culture'),Özgürlük Dünyası (lit. 'World of Freedom') andTîroj, published by the party-affiliated publishing house Evrensel Basım Yayın, were shut down in 2016 by Decree Law No. 675 (KHK) under thestate of emergency. The publishing house was shut down by KHK in January 2017.
