Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey) Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkey) The Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkish: "Halkların Demokratik Partisi" (HDP), Kurdish: "Partiya Demokratîk a Gelan"), or Democratic Party of the Peoples, is a pro-minority political party in Turkey. Generally left-wing, the party places a strong emphasis on participatory democracy, radical democracy, feminism, minority rights, youth rights and egalitarianism. It is an associate member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and consultative member of the Socialist International. Aspiring to fundamentally challenge the existing Turkish-Kurdish divide and other existing parameters in Turkish politics, the HDP was founded in 2012 as the political wing of the Peoples' Democratic Congress,
Religion in Turkey in government buildings, schools, and public universities; the law was upheld by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights as "legitimate" in the "Leyla Şahin v. Turkey" case on November 10, 2005. Separation between mosque and state was established in Turkey soon after its founding in 1923, with an amendment to the Turkish constitution that mandated that Turkey had no official state religion and that the government and the state were to be free of religious influence. The modernizing reforms undertaken by President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s and 1930s further established secularism in Turkey. Despite