Labour Party (Turkey) Labour Party (Turkey) Labour Party (in Turkish: "Emek Partisi", EMEP) is a political party in Turkey. Its chairman is Selma Gürkan. The party was founded as "Emek Partisi" (Labour Party, EP) in 1996. Due to its ban by the Constitutional Court, it was refounded with the name "Emeğin Partisi" (Party of Labour, EMEP), the same year. In 2005, the name "Emek Partisi" was reinstalled after the European Court of Human Rights held the ban was a violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The party defines its ideology as "scientific socialism", referring to Revolutionary Communist 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