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Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party - DTP): DTP was founded in 2005 as the successor of Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP). The party is co-chaired by Ahmet Türk and Emine Ayna. It has 20 members of parliament and the third largest opposition group in the National Assembly. The party also won 8 main municipalities in 2009 local elections.

DTP have most of its grassroots in Kurdish towns as well as in metropolitan cities, though weaker, such as Istanbul, Mersin, Adana, etc. where a large number of Kurdish migrants have settled in the last two decades.

In order to by-pass the legal restraint imposed by the election threshold of receiving at least 10 percent of the votes in order to send MPs to the Assembly, DTP decided its candidates to run as independents in June 22, 2007 general elections. Thereby, DTP succeeded in winning 20 seats in the parliament, hence established a parliamentary group.

This is the second term a Kurdish nationalist party wins seats in the parliament; the first term was a short period in 1994 when Democratic Labor Party (DEP) candidates were elected from the lists of the Social Democratic People’s Party. However, DEP was banned, the immunity of the MPs was stripped, and they were charged with treason and membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

DTP has also been steadily accused of having direct linkages with PKK and following the cause of PKK in the legal political sphere. A case for banning the party has been pending at the Constitutional Court since 2008. An operation against DTP offices and cadres was launched in early April 2009 on allegations that the arrested were PKK members.

DTP received 5.68 percent of votes and won 1 metropolitan, 7 provincial and 50 county municipalities in March 29, 2009 local elections. Almost all of the municipalities won by DTP are in the south and southeast, where the Kurdish population is the majority. The election results are deemed as a success for DTP as it could win only 1 metropolitan, 3 provincial and 32 county municipalities in 2004 elections. Also the incumbent DTP mayor got approximately 66 percent of the votes in Diyarbakır despite Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s pre-election claims that AKP will win.

DTP has been pursuing a more liberal democratic policy compared to its predecessors. The party does not flinch from taking a pro-EU stance, and even search a compromise with the U.S. and U.S. backed Barzani forces in Northern Iraq under the pretext of defending democratic and civil rights for the Kurdish people in Turkey. Although DTP has contacts with Turkish left, the main political line of the party highlights cultural and political rights of Kurds within the limits of bourgeois democracy.