The DSP was unable, however, to achieve a substantial showing in the 1986 Turkish parliamentary by-elections even though Ecevit, despite his ban, continued to campaign at the party's rallies as a "guest speaker".

The inner conflicts in the party ended with the dismissal of Erdal Kesebir, MP for Edirne and three other DSP members.

In 1997, the DSP became a partner of a three-way coalition government led by Mesut Yılmaz who at the time was the leader of the Motherland Party (Turkish: Anavatan Partisi).

Boosted by the capture of the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, during his premiership, Ecevit and the DSP won 22,19% of the votes in the elections of April 1999 and took 136 of the 550 seats in the Turkish Parliament becoming the leading party in a coalition with ANAP and MHP.

The government also changed 34 articles of the Constitution to widen fundamental rights and freedoms, and did this with the approval of all the parties in parliament.

An economic crisis which resulted from long overdue problems from previous governments caused a drop in the currency in February 2001.

Ecevit himself was a vocal critic of the invasion, arguing that it would destabilize the region and cause harm to innocent civilians.

The year after, its government coalition partner MHP called for early elections, which were held on 3 November 2002.

DSP entered the 2007 elections together with the Republican People's Party (Turkish: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP).

[13] On 8 March 2023, the party announced that it would not support the candidacy of CHP's Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for the 2023 Turkish presidential election.

[14] Furthermore, on 9 March 2023, a pro-Erdoğan journalist, Mahmut Övür claimed that DSP would join the People's Alliance.

With this term, the party established a link between universal values of the left and national-cultural heritage which makes the ideology "domestic".