The City Is Ours: HDP in Turkey
BY ROSA BURÇ
"The HDP’s establishment in 2012 was not only the culmination of a decades-long struggle for democratization but also an attempt to redefine politics in Turkey. Introducing a bottom-up practice and a new paradigm based on a new idea of citizenship, the HDP cast itself as the foe of nationalism, oppression, and the patriarchal state, bringing together not only a broad coalition of leftist Kurdish and Turkish parties, but also various minority groups, civil society representatives, ecological movements, labor unions, LGTBQ* movements, and women’s organizations such as the Democratic Free Women’s Movement. In total, thirty-seven parties and organizations participated in the constituent assembly of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress."