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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 and radical democracy, feminism, LGBT+ rights, minority rights, youth rights and egalitarianism. It is an associate member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) a consultative member of the Socialist International and a party within the Progressive Alliance (PA).
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, a union of numerous left-wing movements that had previously fielded candidates as independents to bypass the 10% election threshold. The HDP is in an alliance with the Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP), often described as the HDP's fraternal party. From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
The party operates a co-presidential system of leadership, with one chairman and one chairwoman. In the 2014 presidential election, the party put forward its chairman, Selahattin Demirtaş, who won 9.77% of the vote. Despite concerns that it could fall short of the 10% election threshold, the party put forward party-lists instead of running independent candidates in the subsequent June 2015 general election. Exceeding expectations, it polled at 13.12%, becoming the third largest parliamentary group. The party briefly participated in the interim election government formed by AKP Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on 28 August 2015, with HDP MPs Ali Haydar Konca and Müslüm Doğan becoming the Minister of European Union Affairs and the Minister of Development respectively.
Witnessing the 2016 Turkish coup attempt and pointing out previous repression of democratic forces by martial powers, the HDP strongly opposed the coup. The HDP was first ignored and put left out of the post-coup national truce while the Turkish purges targeted alleged members of the Gülen movement. From September 2016, the Turkish judiciary started to submit HDP elected officials to anti-terrorism accusations. As of March 2018, the MP status of seven HDP representatives had been revoked and six more representatives, including the ex-chairman Demirtaş, remained under arrest, disturbing widely the HDP's ability to communicate and be active on the political scene. In December 2020 HDP co-deputy head for local governments Salim Kaplan said that "since 2016, 20,000 of our members have been taken into custody and more than 10,000 of our members and executives have been sent to jail." and 48 municipalities have been seized by the government.
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