The Thousand Hope Candidates ( Turkish: ''Bin Umut Adayları'') was an

electoral alliance An electoral alliance (also known as a bipartisan electoral agreement, electoral pact, electoral agreement, electoral coalition or electoral bloc) is an association of political party, political parties or individuals that exists solely to stand ...

between four left-wing political parties in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

, formed in preparation for the 2007 general election. The alliance contested the election by fielding candidates from participating parties as independents in order to bypass the 10%

election threshold The electoral threshold, or election threshold, is the minimum share of the primary vote that a candidate or political party requires to achieve before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature. This limit can ...

needed to win seats in the Turkish

Grand National Assembly Great National Assembly or Grand National Assembly may refer to: * Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia, an assembly of Romanian delegates that declared the unification of Transylvania and Romania * Great National Assembly (Socialist Republic of R ...

. The alliance's candidates won a total of 1,334,518 votes and 22 seats in the election. Lacking a realistic prospect of gaining parliamentary representation due to the 10% threshold, the pro-Kurdish

Democratic Society Party The Democratic Society Party ( tr, Demokratik Toplum Partisi, DTP, Kurdish: ''Partiya Civaka Demokratîk'', PCD) was a Kurdish nationalist political party in Turkey. The party considered itself social-democratic and had observer status in the So ...

(DTP), the socialist libertarian

Freedom and Solidarity Party The Left Party ( tr, Sol Parti, often written as SOL Parti), is a secular, socialist political party in Turkey. The Party was founded after Freedom and Solidarity Party ( tr, Özgürlük ve Dayanışma Partisi - ÖDP) decided to change its name ...

(ÖDP), the Labour Party (EMEP) and the

Socialist Democracy Party Socialist Democracy Party (''Sosyalist Demokrasi Partisi'', SDP) was a socialist party in Turkey. Most of its members were formerly in an opposition grouping within ÖDP, named ''Sosyalist Eylem Platformu'' (Socialist Action Platform). They def ...

(SDP) joined forces and decided to field candidates under a joint alliance, hence creating the Thousand Hope alliance. The alliance stated that its candidates included individuals who could extend the appeal of the political left to the general public, having also extended support to other left-wing candidates who were not part of the four member parties. The alliance fielded 65 candidates in 40

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

. The Labour Party and the Freedom and Solidarity Party fielded their own candidates in the remaining 41 provinces but fell well short of the 10% electoral threshold. The alliance was also in favour of

minority rights Minority rights are the normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or gender and sexual minorities, and also the collective rights accorded to any minority group. Civil-rights movements ofte ...

, having openly campaigned as 'Kurds wanting peace'. Segments of society such as the

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

community, which the alliance claimed had faced discrimination and oppression, played a major role in alliance's election campaign. Critics branded the alliance as

Kurdish nationalist Kurdish nationalism (, ) is a nationalist political movement which asserts that Kurds are a nation and espouses the creation of an independent Kurdistan from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Early Kurdish nationalism had its roots in the Ottoman ...

, pointing to the pro-Kurdish DTP, which was the biggest of the four participating parties. A similar alliance, namely the

Labour, Democracy and Freedom Bloc The Labour, Democracy and Freedom Bloc (Turkish language, Turkish: ''Emek, Demokrasi ve Özgürlük Bloğu'') was an electoral alliance formed by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) with several other smaller left-wing parties and polit ...

, was formed in preparation for the 2011 general election four years later.

General election performance

Results

*This table only shows the votes won by the Thousand Hope candidates, who stood in 40

. In the remaining 41 provinces, the Freedom and Solidarity Party and the Labour Party fielded their own candidates. The votes that they won in these other provinces that were not part of the Thousand Hope candidate alliance are not shown. *Swing and seat change is compared to the Democratic People's Party's performance in the 2002 general election *Provinces won by Thousand Hope candidates are coloured in the map

Elected members

22 of a total of 65 candidates were elected. The combined votes won by Thousand Hope candidates were higher than any other party in the provinces of

Tunceli Tunceli ( ku, Dêrsim) is a city and municipality in eastern Turkey. It is the capital of Tunceli Province, located in the middle of the Eastern Anatolia Region. The city has a Kurdish-majority population and was a site of the Dersim rebellion. ...

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır (; ; ; ) is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, ...

Muş Muş (; hy, Մուշ; ku, Mûş) is a city and the provincial capital of Muş Province in Turkey. Its population is mostly Kurds. Etymology Various explanations of the origin of Muş's name exist. Its name is sometimes associated with the Arm ...

Iğdır Iğdır ( Turkish ; ku, Îdir or ; hy, Իգդիր, Igdir, also ) is the capital of Iğdır Province in the Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. History Iğdır went by the Armenian name of Tsolakert during the Middle Ages. s.v. "Igdir," Armenia ...

Hakkari Hakkari or Hakkâri may refer to: *Hakkari (historical region), a historical region in modern-day Turkey and Iraq *Hakkâri (city), a city and the capital of Hakkâri Province, Turkey *Hakkâri Province Hakkâri Province (, tr, Hakkâri ili, ...

and

Şırnak Şırnak ( ku, شرنەخ, Şirnex) is a town in southeastern Turkey. It is the capital of Şırnak Province, a new province that split from the Mardin and Siirt provinces. The Habur border gate with Iraq which is one of Turkey's main links to Arab ...

. The results represented a significant swing to the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), which made heavy gains in the Kurdish south-east were the Democratic People's Party had won back in

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

. Only 2 of the 22 Thousand Hope Candidates elected were from non-southeastern provinces, namely

Ufuk Uras Mehmet Ufuk Uras (; born January 4, 1959, in Üsküdar, Istanbul, Turkey) is a Turkish left-libertarian politician and economist. Biography and political career Uras graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Istanbul University and began work ...

and

Sebahat Tuncel Sebahat Tuncel (born 5 July 1975) is a Turkish politician of Kurdish origin, women's rights advocate, former nurse and member of the Parliament in Turkey. She was elected a member of parliament while being in prison. Early life and education ...

from İstanbul's 1st and

3rd Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * Second#Sexagesimal divisions of calendar time and day, 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (d ...

electoral district respectively. The following table shows the distribution of DTP, SDP, EMEP and ÖDP members within the 22 elected members. The full list of members elected under the Thousand Hope banner are as follows:

Votes won by participating parties elsewhere

The Labour Party and the

both fielded candidates as a party in electoral districts where the Thousand Hope Candidates did not run for election. The votes shares won by these parties are as follows.

References

External links

ÖDP official websiteSDP official website
*''The DTP, having been dissolved in 2009 and replaced by the