Patriotic Party (Turkey)

Patriotic Party
Vatan Partisi
AbbreviationVatan Partisi (official)
VP (unofficial)
PresidentDoğu Perinçek
Secretary-GeneralÖzgür Bursalı
Founded10 July 1992 (1992-07-10) (as Workers' Party)
15 February 2015 (2015-02-15) (rebranding)
Preceded byWorkers' Party
HeadquartersToros Sokak 9, 06430
Sıhhiye, Çankaya, Ankara
NewspaperAydınlık
Think tankNational Strategy Center (USMER)
Youth wingVanguard Youth
Women's wingVanguard Women
Membership (2026)Decrease 12,311
IdeologyMaoism
Socialism
Left-wing nationalism
Kemalism
Ulusalcılık
Eurasianism
Political positionLeft-wing
International affiliationSovintern
Colors  Red
  White
Grand National Assembly
0 / 600
Metropolitan municipalities
0 / 30
District municipalities
0 / 1,351
Provincial councilors
0 / 1,251
Municipal Assemblies
0 / 20,498
Website
vatanpartisi.org.tr

The Patriotic Party (Turkish: Vatan Partisi, VP) is a political party in Turkey. The Patriotic Party describes itself as a "vanguard party" and its chairman, Doğu Perinçek, described the party in 2015 as a bringing together of socialists, revolutionaries, Turkish nationalists and Kemalists. The party is strongly pro-China and pro-Russia as well as anti-American. The party also supports President Erdoğan and what it considers to be his anti-imperialist policies.

History

The political tradition of the Patriotic Party is based on the Luminosity (Aydınlık) movement. The party was founded in 1992 as Workers' Party. In 2015, after a long-time political repositioning period, the Workers' Party changed its name to "Patriotic Party" during the extraordinary congress. Like the Workers' Party, the Patriotic Party is led by Doğu Perinçek. The party's founding members include former army generals who had been pursued during the Ergenekon trials and the Sledgehammer case, though both cases have been thrown out since then.

Political positions

The party is closely aligned with the nationalist ideology named Ulusalcılık and has been described as left-wing, and left-wing nationalist. It officially supports Kemalism. Article 1 of the Basic Principles section of the party charter states that "The Patriotic Party is the vanguard party fighting for the common national power of the Turkish working class, peasants, artisans and craftsmen, public employees, intellectual laborers, national industrialists and merchants. The Patriotic Party embraces the nationalist, pro-people and socialist accumulation of the Turkish Revolution under a single discipline on the basis of the Party's charter and program."

The party also supports the ruling People's Alliance, which is right-wing and conservative in nature, though it is not a member. Perinçek has stated that "[r]epublicans, nationalists, populists, socialists and revolutionaries all unite in one party, the Patriotic Party". According to its charter, the party advocates for a "national democratic revolution", calls for "ideological independence" and organizes itself on the basis of democratic centralism.

Foreign policy

The party is strongly pro-Russia and pro-China and anti-American because of its Eurasianist ideology. It is also strongly anti-NATO and advocates for Turkey's departure from it. It is also Eurosceptic and against Turkey's EU candidacy. The Patriotic Party supports strong relations with countries such as Iran and North Korea. It also has strong party-to-party relations with parties such as the Chinese Communist Party and the Workers' Party of Korea.

The party strongly opposes the current Turkish intervention in Syria and promoted better ties with the Assad government. In 2022, the party and its leader, Doğu Perinçek, openly supported Vladimir Putin and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. saying that "it is the weapon that Russia is currently using that brings peace and tranquility". The party congratulated the Alternative for Germany (AfD) following its victory in the 2026 Saxony-Anhalt state election, and said calling AfD "far-right and racist" was American propaganda.

Media

The Patriotic Party is affiliated with a number of news publications including Aydınlık, Ulusal Kanal and Bilim ve Ütopya.

Electoral performance

Parliamentary elections

Grand National Assembly of Turkey
Election date Leader Votes % Seats
June 2015 Doğu Perinçek 161,616 0.35%
0 / 550
November 2015 118,803 0.25%
0 / 550
2018 114,872 0.23%
0 / 600
2023 53,339 0.10%
0 / 600

Presidential elections

Election Candidate Votes % Outcome
2018
Doğu Perinçek		 98,955 0.20% 6th
2023 Endorsed Erdoğan in the Second Round

Local elections

ElectionParty leaderMayoral election votesPercentage of votesMunicipal councillor votesPercentage of votesNumber of municipalitiesNumber of councillorsMap
2024 Doğu Perinçek

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The party's Turkish name Vatan directly translates to Motherland or Homeland; however the party has adopted the English name Patriotic Party. This is most likely in order not to clash with parties that have a similar name when translated to English, such as the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) or the Homeland Party (Yurt Partisi). Patriotic in Turkish translates to Vatansever or Yurtsever. The party's official short name (abbreviation) is Vatan Partisi, i.e., the same as the name of the party itself. Colloquially the acronym VP is used.[citation needed] The party is not directly related to an earlier, communist party of the same name, founded in 1954, closed by court order in 1957, re-established in 1975 and forced to close again in 1981.

    References

    1. ↑ "Vatan Partisi" (in Turkish). Court of Cassation. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
    2. ↑
    3. ↑ Berk, Can (October 2018). A Critical Analysis of Turkish Left's Interpretation of the World Order and Turkish Foreign Policy (PDF) (Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations thesis). Middle East Technical University. p. 53. The following section examines three prominent socialist parties of the era (the TSP, TKP and Vatan Party) and offers a critical analysis of their interpretations of the world order and Turkey's foreign policy.
    4. ↑
      • Ünal, Betül Aydoğan (2020). "Opening the Ballot Box: Strategic Voting in Turkey's June 2018 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections". Studia Politica: Romanian Political Science Review. 20 (1). Social Science Open Access Repository: 113. The nationalist İYİ Party's candidate Meral Akşener, the Islamist SP's candidate Temel Karamollaoğlu, and the leftist-nationalist Homeland Party's (Vatan Partisi [VP]) candidate Doğu Perinçek ran for the presidency by collecting 100,000 signatures each from the public, since their parties had neither received at least 5 percent of the total votes in the last election nor had they elected representatives to the parliament.
      • Bermek, Sevinç (2019). The Rise of Hybrid Political Islam in Turkey: Origins and Consolidation of the JDP. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 238. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14203-2. ISBN 978-3-030-14203-2. These included ultranationalist groups such as Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Movement Party, MHP) and Doğu Perinçek, the leader of the left-wing nationalist party Vatan Partisi (Patriotic Party, VP).
      • Demir, Ali (2023). Dursun Kose (ed.). "Legitimacy, Complexity and Motives for Political Action". International Research in Social Humanities and Administrative Sciences. Platanus Publishing: 529. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7744434. ISBN 9786256971271. Cumhur-Alliance candidate is the incumbent President Recep Tayip Erdoğan, who is also supported by the rather small, left-wing nationalist Vatan Partisi and indirectly by Memleket Partisi.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
    5. ↑ Can, Yahya Kemal (30 July 2024). "Is nationalism on the rise in Turkey?". Heinrich Böll Foundation. Istanbul. The Eurasianist and Maoist Patriotic Party (VP), which defends the harshest nationalist policies and supports Erdoğan, should not be omitted from this list.
    6. 1 2
      • Kashgary, Jilil (6 January 2021). "Turkish Opposition Leader Says Extradition Treaty With China Should Hinge on Xinjiang Probe". Radio Free Asia. Translated by Joshua Lipes. In particular, Özdağ called on Erdoğan and his ally Nationalist Movement (MHP) Party leader Devlet Bahçeli to break with Doğu Perinçek, the leader of the radical left-wing Vatan Party (Homeland Party), who is known in Turkey for his pro-China support.
      • Derisiotis, Anthony (June 2022). From grey zones to blue homelands: tales of lost opportunities in Turkish-Greek relations. International Congress on Security, Peace and Stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. Conference Proceedings. Adana: Çağ University and Çukurova University. pp. 25–26. The 2017 referendum cooperation with the MHP, was transformed into the People's Alliance for the presidential election in 2018, and despite the differences that arose prior to the 2019 local elections that speculated a possible split, its ultra-conservative twist was undersigned by the support 26 from the nationalist left wing Vatan Party, the pro-military AS Party and the conservative Motherland Party.
      • Porcell, Pablo (22 June 2024). "Turkey: Who Is Running in Presidential, Parliamentary Elections". SINE ISEN. Perinçek, on the other side, is the candidate for the leftist Patriotic Party (VP), the successor of the socialist and workers' party.
      • Pekesen, Berna (2020). "Atatürk's unfinished revolution – The Turkish student movement and left-wing Kemalism in the 1960s". In Lutz Berger; Tamer Düzyol (eds.). Kemalism as a Fixed Variable in the Republic of Turkey: History, Society, Politics. Orientalistik. Vol. 31. Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag. p. 114. doi:10.5771/9783956506338. ISBN 978-3-95650-633-8. ISSN 1866-5071. In today's Turkey it is Doğu Perinçek's "Vatan Partisi" ("Homeland Party", or "Patriotic Party"), which expressly views itself in the tradition of left Kemalism. Perinçek himself was also a member of the 1968 movement and co-founder of the "Devrimci İşçi-Köylü Partisi" (Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey, 1971). A quick search in the internet reveals that the Vatan Partisi is alternately labelled as a left-nationalist, left-Kemalist, or ultranationalist party.
    7. ↑ 2015 GENEL SEÇİM KURUMSAL KİMLİK KILAVUZU Archived 24 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine, 2015.
    8. ↑ "Vatan Partisi" (in Turkish). T.C. Yargıtay Cumhuriyet Başsavcılığı. Archived from the original on 5 June 2016. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
    9. 1 2 "Vatan Partisi tüzüğü" (in Turkish). Retrieved 18 May 2015.
    10. ↑ Yurdakul, Mithat (16 February 2015). "Artık 'İşçi' değil 'Vatan' Partisi" [No Longer 'Workers' Now 'Patriotic' Party]. Milliyet. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
    11. ↑ "Vatan Partisi MYK üyeleri belli oldu, işte o isimler!". Çağdaş Ses.
    12. ↑ "Türkiye'de Partilerin Milliyetçilik ve Din Anlayışları". DergiPark. Archived from the original on 14 May 2022. Retrieved 12 March 2023.
    13. ↑ "Doğu Perinçek: Atatürk ne kadar paylaşılırsa". Archived from the original on 19 November 2017.
    14. ↑ "Cumhur İttifakı'na Perinçek ve Uzan" (in Turkish). 20 December 2019.
    15. ↑ Turkey: Workers' Party changes name to Patriotic Party Archived 22 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine. turkishweekly.net. 16 February 2015
    16. 1 2 @DFRLab (23 November 2017). "#LetsLeaveNATO trends in Turkey". Medium. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
    17. ↑ "CPC-led China offers hope for better world – Turkish party leader". China Daily. 19 October 2017. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
    18. 1 2 "Turkey elections 2018: Understanding the political parties". TRT World. 23 June 2018. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
    19. ↑ "Doğu Perinçek: "Vatan Partisi hükümeti İran'a yaptırıma katılmayacak"". Retrieved 29 August 2019.
    20. ↑ "Vatan Partisi Heyeti, Kuzey Kore'ye Gitti – İstanbul". Haberler.com (in Turkish). 5 September 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
    21. ↑ "Çin Komünist Partisi'nden Vatan Partisi'ne ziyaret". Retrieved 29 August 2019.
    22. ↑ "Kuzey Kore'den Vatan Partisi'ne kutlama mesajı" [Celebration Message from North Korea to the Patriotic Party]. CNN Türk. 29 September 2015. Retrieved 11 March 2023.
    23. ↑ "Vatan Partisi President Perinçek's Call to President Erdoğan: "Cooperate with Syria or resign"". Vatan Partisi. 22 January 2018. Retrieved 28 August 2019.
    24. ↑ "Doğu Perinçek'ten Rusya açıklaması: Karadeniz'e barış Türkiye'ye refah". www.cumhuriyet.com.tr (in Turkish). 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
    25. 1 2 "Doğu Perinçek'ten Rusya değerlendirmesi: Hz. Peygamberin Uhud savaşına Bedir savaşına hayır diyebilir misiniz?". Independent Türkçe (in Turkish). 2 March 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
    26. ↑ "Vatan Partisi'nden Almanya seçimlerini silip süpüren AfD'ye tebrik! "Aşırı sağcı demek ABD propagandasıdır"". Ulusal Kanal (in Turkish). 7 September 2026. Retrieved 7 September 2026.