ABSTRACT
The existence of social democratic politics in Turkey is a relatively recent phenomenon, since the term ‘socialism’ entered usage during the early nineteenth century.1 In Turkey, one can trace the origins of social democratic politics to the period after the May 1960 coup d’état. More important than its chronological starting point, the movement was initiated by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – CHP), the party of Kemal Atatürk, and the founding party of Turkey’s republican regime. Leftist politics – mainly communist – had been in existence prior to 1960, however, they were both overshadowed and repressed by the Kemalist movement between 1919 and 1938. It is somewhat puzzling therefore that a state founding party such as the CHP, which prevented the development of leftist politics for an extended period of time, should espouse a leftist ideology during and after the 1960s.
