Leader Doğu Perinçek Succeeded by Patriotic Party | Preceded by Socialist Party | |
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Founded July 10, 1992 (1992-07-10) Dissolved February 15, 2015 (2015-02-15) Headquarters Toros Sokak No: 9 Sıhhiye, Ankara, Turkey | ||
The Workers' Party (Turkish: İşçi Partisi) was a political party in Turkey led by Doğu Perinçek. İP has its roots in the Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİİKP), the Workers' and Peasants' Party of Turkey (TİKP) and the Socialist Party (SP). They are known as "Aydınlıkçılar" (Clarifiers) due to their daily newspaper Aydınlık ("Clarify" or "Enlightenment") that has a circulation of 63.000.
Contents
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.
Overview
The İP traditionally combined Maoist rhetoric with a hardline Kemalism. Although they accept scientific socialism as their main ideology, they have a more patriotic ideology than other left-wing parties in Turkey. Their revolutionary strategy 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. They admire the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (who is considered a "left-wing bourgeois democratic revolutionary" by the Chairman Perinçek ) as much as they admire Marxist revolutionary leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. They also promote alliances with nations they believe have anti-imperialist tendencies (such as Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba) and oppose the existence of American expansionism - (such as India, China and Russia).
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".