BARIS VE DEMOKRASI PARTISI

(BDP)

   The BDP, or Peace and Democracy Party, became the most recent legal pro-Kurdish party in Turkey at the end of 2009 after the Demokratik Toplum Partisi (DTP) was banned on 11 December 2009. The BDP had already been established as a possible replacement party for the DTP after a closure case had been opened against it in November 2007. After some hesitation and upon the urging of Abdullah (Apo) Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the 19 DTP members still in the Turkish parliament joined the BDP.

   In February 2010, the BDP held a congress attended by some 2,000 delegates and elected Selahattin Demirtas and Gulten Kisanak as its co-chairs.(Kisanak, a female journalist born in the southeastern Turkish city of Elazig in 1961, graduated from Ege University in Turkey.) Although the new pro-Kurdish party sought to take a more independent stand from the PKK than had the DTP, the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office immediately launched an investigation against it. The BDP also was soon faced with the arrest of hundreds of Kurdish politicians throughout Turkey. Demirtas, a lawyer born in the southeastern Turkish city of Palu in 1973, advocated linguistic and cultural civil disobedience, including the usage of the Kurdish language among doctors, teachers, and students.

   The BDP's logo is a green oak tree on a yellow background. In Kurdish culture the oak tree is a symbol of hardiness, resoluteness, and resistance. The words of a Kurdish song proclaim: "I am like an oak tree. I disappoint the axe, when they come to cut me down."