Workers' Party (Turkey)

The Workers' Party (Turkish: İşçi Partisi) was a political party founded in 1992 and led by Doğu Perinçek. It has its own roots in the Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİİKP), the Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİKP) and the Socialist Party (SP) which was banned by the Constitutional Court in 1992.[4] They are known as "Aydınlıkçılar" (Clarifiers) due to their daily newspaper Aydınlık ("Clarify" or "Enlightenment") that has a circulation of 63,000.[5]

Not to be confused with Workers' Party of Turkey (1961) or Workers' Party of Turkey (2017).
Workers' Party
İşçi Partisi
LeaderDoğu Perinçek
Founded10 July 1992 (1992-07-10)
Dissolved15 February 2015 (2015-02-15)
Preceded bySocialist Party
Succeeded byPatriotic Party
HeadquartersToros Sokak No: 9 Sıhhiye, Ankara
IdeologyScientific socialism
Left-wing nationalism[1]
Left-wing populism[2][3]
Ulusalcılık
Maoism
Political positionLeft-wing to far-left
International affiliationCILRECO (International Liaison Committee for Reunification and Peace in Korea), Los Partidos Y Una Nueva Sociedad.
Colours  Red,   White
SloganBağımsızlık, devrim, sosyalizm! ("Independence, revolution, socialism!")

During a general assembly on 15 February 2015, the Workers' Party was rebranded and changed its name to Patriotic Party, with Perinçek remaining as leader.[4]

Overview

The İP traditionally combined Maoist rhetoric with a hardline left-wing Kemalism called ulusalcılık. The party accepts scientific socialism as their main ideology, but they have a more patriotic ideology than other left-wing parties in Turkey. Their revolutionary ideals is based on "National Democratic Revolution", which is close to Mao Zedong's "New Democratic Revolution". İP supports Stalin's "Socialism in One Country" thesis, rather than Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev's "national communism" thesis. Such that, Mehmet Bedri Gültekin, deputy chairman of the party, wrote a book on Sultan-Galiev's counter-revolutionary role.[6] They admire the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (who is considered a "left-wing bourgeois democratic revolutionary" by Chairman Perinçek [7]) as much as they admire Marxist revolutionary leaders like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. The party promotes alliances with nations that the party believes have anti-imperialist tendencies (such as Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba) and oppose the existence of American expansionism - (such as India, China and Russia).[8][9]

İP states that a brotherhood based solution to the Kurdish question must exclude imperialist initiative in the Middle East. They claim that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been completely under the control of the USA since the Gulf War. İP asserts that it is still possible to unite Turkish and Kurdish people in Turkey within the borders of an anti-imperialist nation state which will be established through a democratic revolution. According to them, separatism became a tool of American imperialism in breaking national markets in the Third World in post-Cold War conditions. Although they traverse separation, they also defend democratic rights and freedoms of Kurds in Turkey. For İP, the key tool to solve the Kurdish problem is to demolish "feudal structures" in Kurdish provinces and make peasants "free citizens".[10][11][12]

Wings
  • The youth student wing of İP is known as Öncü Gençlik (Vanguard Youth).
  • The women wing of İP is known as Öncü Kadın (Vanguard Women).

Media

Election results

References
  1. "Milliyetçi olmayan bir parti". Marksist. Archived from the original on 7 October 2015. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  2. "ZAMAN GAZETES". Archived from the original on 2006-05-26.
  3. "Avrupa'nın popülist sol parti ihtiyacı" (in Turkish). Aljazeera. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  4. "Brief history of the Patriotic Party". Vatan Partisi. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  5. "MEDYATAVA - Çift Sarılı Yumurta Tadında". www.medyatava.net. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012.
  6. "Sultan Galiyev Eleştirisi : Teori ve Siyaset : : Kaynak Yayınları". Archived from the original on 2013-08-18. Retrieved 2013-08-17.
  7. "Kemalist Devrim 1/Teorik Çerçeve - Doğu Perinçek". Kitapyurdu. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
  8. "Worker's Party (Turkey)| 08.11.2012". Archived from the original on 2012-11-08. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  9. "Worker's Party (Turkey)| 23.10.2013". Archived from the original on 2013-10-23. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  10. "Worker's Party (Turkey)| 08.11.2012". Archived from the original on 2012-11-08. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  11. "Worker's Party (Turkey)| 22.10.2013". Archived from the original on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
  12. "Worker's Party (Turkey)| 22.10.2013". Archived from the original on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-08-18.
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