Workers Party of Turkey Workers Party of Turkey Workers Party of Turkey ("Türkiye İşçi Partisi") was a Turkish political party, founded in 1961. It became the first socialist party in Turkey to win representation in the national parliament. It was banned twice (after the military coups of 1971 and 1980) and eventually merged with the Communist Party of Turkey in 1987. TİP was founded by a group of labour union members. After a year of inactivity, the founders invited Marxist lawyer Mehmet Ali Aybar to assume the leadership of the party. Following Aybar, several other Marxist intellectuals also joined the ranks and the party
Freedom and Solidarity Party the initial groupings left. In 2002 elections, the party's share of the national vote fell further to 0.3%. In the 2004 local elections, the ÖDP gained control of two town halls in Artvin and Yozgat provinces. In these elections, the ÖDP had joined an electoral coalition with the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (Turkey) (DEHAP) and the left Social Democrat SHP (Sosyaldemokrat Halk Partisi). At the next 2009 local elections, Mithat Nehir was the sole victorious ÖDP candidate in the entire republic (17,723 votes for the whole country, i.e. 0.04%), and became mayor of the Samandağ district. Ufuk Uras, who was