Halkın Emek Partisi

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Halkın Emek Partisi (HEP)
Labor Party of the People
Party leader Fehmi Işıklar
Feridun Yazar
Ahmet Türk
founding June 7, 1990
(de facto predecessor: Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti / SHP)
Prohibition July 14, 1993
(: Demokrasi Partisi / DEP)
Alignment Center-left, solution of the Kurdish question
Colours) yellow, green, red

The Halkın Emek Partisi ( German  Labor Party of the People ; HEP) was a political party in Turkey that existed from 1990 to 1993 and focused on solving the Kurdish question .

history

On November 16, 1989 the MPs Kenan Sönmez, İsmail Hakkı Önal, Ahmet Türk , Mehmet Ali Eren, Adnan Ekmen, Mahmut Alınak and Salih Sümer were expelled from the social democrat Halkçı Parti because they had attended a conference of the Kurdish Institute in Paris a month earlier on human rights and the identity of the Kurds in Turkey. Party comrades who were against this exclusion and who now left the SHP in protest were Abdullah Baştürk, Ahmet Fehmi Işıklar , Cüneyt Canver, Mehmet Kahraman, Arif Sağ , İlhami Binici, Kemal Anadol, Hüsnü Okçuoğlu, Tevıfik Koçon Güven Ateşluak, Kamilven Ateşluğlu Gurkan. Party members in Diyarbakır also left the party.

Several of these MPs founded the HEP on June 7, 1990. Fehmi Işıklar was elected party chairman, while İbrahim Aksoy became general secretary. On December 15, 1991, Feridun Yazar was elected chairman. This was replaced on September 19, 1992 by Ahmet Türk. Since it was foreseeable that the HEP would not exceed the nationwide threshold of 10% in the parliamentary elections in October 1991 , the HEP entered into an electoral alliance with the SHP. In this way the HEP was able to win 21 seats. Among the elected MPs were politicians such as Hatip Dicle (Diyarbakır), Leyla Zana (Diyarbakır), Ahmet Türk (Mardin), Sırrı Sakık (Muş), Zübeyir Aydar (Siirt) and Orhan Doğan (Şırnak). After the election, the HEP MPs of the SHP set the condition that the SHP should stand up for the rights of the Kurds to remain in the parliamentary group. During the oath of office on November 6, 1991, Leyla Zana wore a ribbon in the traditional Kurdish colors of yellow, green and red around her head. She took the oath of loyalty in Turkish, as required by the law, but then added in Kurdish: "Long live the Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood." This caused a major scandal and protest in parliament. When Mahmut Alınak said in parliament on December 26, 1991 that two of our brothers had died, one was a soldier, a PKK fighter , he was forcibly dragged from the lectern.

The party alliance with the SHP did not last long. Due to the scandal during the oath of office in Parliament by Leyla Zana and Hatip Dicle and the unrest at the Newroz celebrations in 1992, 18 MPs left the SHP and joined the HEP in March 1992 at the request of SHP chairman Erdal İnönü . Only Fehmi Işıklar, Adnan Ekmen ve Salih Sümer remained in the SHP.

On July 3, 1992, the Prosecutor General applied to the Court of Cassation for a ban on political parties because of the violation of the indivisibility of the state and people and because of illegal activities . In the event of a ban, the Özgürlük ve Eşitlik Partisi (ÖZEP, Party for Freedom and Equality) was founded on June 25th as an alternative , but it merged with the HEP only a short time later. Another alternative was the Özgürlük ve Demokrasi Partisi (ÖZDEP, Party for Freedom and Democracy) founded on October 19, 1992 , which, however, was confronted with a party ban. The Turkish Constitutional Court unanimously decided on July 14, 1993 to ban the HEP and to revoke Fehmi Işıklar's mandate. The mandates of the 18 members of parliament were retained because they had switched to the recently founded Demokrasi Partisi (DEP, Democracy Party).

HEP positions

The demands of the HEP were school instruction in the mother tongue; an open discussion of the Kurdish problem; the lifting of the state of emergency (OHAL) in the east; Dissolution of the paramilitary units, the village guards ; Repeal of anti-terror laws; enabling the resettled village population to return and a general right to strike .

Murders of HEP members

In the 1990s the conflict between the state and the PKK increased. In addition to an increase in skirmishes among the armed parties, there were more and more casualties among the civilian population. Some HEP politicians have also been kidnapped, tortured or killed. On June 21, 1991, the HEP member and the functionary of the human rights organization İHD Sıddık Tan in Batman was murdered by unknown perpetrators. The chairman of the HEP for Diyarbakır Province, Vedat Aydın, who was abducted from his home on July 5, 1991, was murdered on July 7, 1991 and found outside the city with signs of torture. At his funeral, the security forces shot at the participants. Seven people were killed and 200 people were injured. Other murder victims were: Abdurrahman Söğüt in Nusaybin (July 16, 1992), Mehmet Emin Narin in Nusaybin (February 27, 1992), Felemez Güneş in Silvan (June 19, 1992) the district chairman of Gaziantep Abdulsamet (Abdulsalem) Sakık (November 3 1992), Sait Eren in Diyarbakır (November 3, 1992), Rodi Demirkapı in Kovancılar (November 5, 1992) and HEP members Idris Çelik and Yusuf Solmaz in Antalya (December 1 and 4, 1992). Most of these murders are said to have been carried out by the radical Islamic organization Hezbollah . The members and functionaries of the HEP who were murdered in 1993 included: Habip Kılıç, member of the party parliament, he was murdered on September 2, 1993 in Batman, Mehmet Sincar, MP for the province of Mardin, he was together with the HEP (DEP) Functionary Metin Özdemir murdered in Batman on September 4, 1993. In 1993 the HEP officials Mehmet Ertan in Batman (January 21, 1993) and Davut Yalçınkaya in Kızıltepe (April 10, 1993) were murdered by unrecognized perpetrators. Cemal Akar, who was murdered in Erzincan on February 25, 1993 in Erzincan, was the chairman of the potential successor party ÖZDEP. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), 71 members and incumbents of the HEP and its successor party (DEP and HADEP) have been murdered since 1991.

source

  • Mehmet Şahin and Kauffeld: Data and facts on Kurds and Kurdistan , Pro Humanitate publishing house, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-933884-08-X

Individual evidence

  1. ^ HEP, DEP ve HADEP de kapatılmıştı. In: milliyet.com.tr. Milliyet , December 11, 2009; accessed January 31, 2015 .
  2. ↑ HEP kuruldu. In: Milliyet. July 8, 1990, accessed January 31, 2015 .
  3. ↑ A detailed report on the events can be found in Al Jazeera from June 23, 2015 on the page Yemin krizinden bugüne ; Accessed June 28, 2015
  4. ↑ See the judgment of the ECtHR of April 9, 2002 and a factsheet on political parties and associations of June 2014
  5. ↑ See the annual report of the Foundation for Human Rights in Turkey (Turkish) for 1991, Ankara January 1992, p. 65
  6. ↑ See the annual report of the Foundation for Human Rights in Turkey (Turkish) for 1991, Ankara January 1992, pp. 62–63
  7. ↑ See the annual report of the Foundation for Human Rights in Turkey (Turkish) for 1992, Ankara 1993, pp. 43, 65–70 and 190
  8. ↑ See the report in Bianet from December 12, 2009 with the title 1990'dan Bugüne, HEP'ten DTP'ye Kürtlerin Zorlu Siyaset Mücadelesi ; Accessed June 28, 2015
  9. ↑ See the annual report of the Foundation for Human Rights in Turkey (Turkish) for 1993, Ankara June 1994, p. 305
  10. ↑ See the undated report by HRW on Backgrounder on Repression of the Kurds in Turkey, probably 1999; Accessed June 28, 2015