Labour Party is a political party in Turkey. Its chairman is Selma Gürkan. The party was founded as Emek Partisi in 1996. Due to its ban by the Constitutional Court, it was refounded with the name Emeğin Partisi, the same year. In 2005, the name "Emek Partisi" was reinstalled after the European Court of Human Rights held the ban was a violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The party defines its ideology as "scientific socialism", referring to Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey as the "illegal revolutionary party of the working class". EMEP presents itself, on the other hand, as "an open worker's party". Its ideological stance is in accord with the line of ICMLPO. In its programme, EMEP identifies its goal as creating a "Independent and Democratic Turkey". The party publishes the daily Evrensel, identified as "daily worker's newspaper" and as "a main tool of propaganda, agitation, and organisation activities". The party is one of the participants in the People's Democratic Congress, a political initiative instrumental in founding the Peoples' Democratic Party in 2012.
Electoral results
The party participated in 1999 General Elections, getting 51,756 votes, i.e. 0.17% of the total vote. In 2007 EMEP became a constituent party in the Thousand Hopes Alliance formed around DEHAP. The aim of the alliance was to present its candidates to the Turkish Parliament as independents in order to circumvent the 10% threshold which has been introduced in the Turkish Constitution in 1982. At the 2007 General Elections the party gathered 26,574 votes i.e. 0.08%.
The Labour Party had been a member of the Peoples' Democratic Congress and had participated in the establishment of the HDP in 2012. However, the EMEP released a statement on 17 June 2014, announcing a split with the HDP. The split was attributed to the restructuring of the Kurdish nationalistPeace and Democracy Party into a local-only party under the new name Democratic Regions Party, 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 the 2014 presidential election and also announced that they would not be running in the June 2015 general election.
