[4] On 11 December 2009, the Constitutional Court of Turkey banned the DTP, ruling that the party has become "focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation".
DTH was set up by the veteran Kurdish politicians, former deputies Leyla Zana, Orhan Doğan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak upon their release from prison in 2004.
[5] The party assumed the solving of the Kurdish question and a democratization of Turkey would also lead to the spread of democracy in the Middle East.
[7][8] However, Nurettin Demirtaş was imprisoned the following month because of a fake health report that enabled him to avoid military service.
[14] The Turkish government was not pleased with the celebrated welcome, the PKK militants received and detained over 400 high ranking DTP politicians.
[17] The party wanted a more decentralized style of government and supported the implementation of an administrative structure adapted to the local population.
"[20] A delegation consisting of the DTP MP's Fatma Kurtalan, Osman Özçelik and Aysel Tuğluk traveled to Northern Iraq to mediate the release of 8 arrested Turkish soldiers by the PKK in 2007.
[25] In October 2007, in a meeting of the ambassadors of the EU countries and the U.S. to Turkey, it was reported that the diplomats pressured the DTP to denounce the PKK as terrorist,[26][27] following a DTP-sponsored conference, whose final declaration called the imprisoned PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, a "leader of the Kurdish people" and called for his release.
[35] A few days after the deadly attack by the PKK on Turkish soldiers,[13] the Constitutional Court of Turkey voted to ban the DTP on the 11 December 2009, ruling that the party has become the "focal point of activities against the indivisible unity of the state, the country and the nation" as the party has an organic connection to the PKK.
[39] These party members include: Ahmet Türk, Leyla Zana, Aysel Tuğluk, Hüseyin Kalkan, Nurettin Demirtaş, Orhan Miroğlu.
Later the same day, the Presidency of the European Union released a statement, expressing concern over the Turkish court ruling, and calling upon Turkey to reform its legislation on political parties.
The Ankara politics tried to find out the answers regarding these new members ability to follow the legislation sessions, such that 16 years ago same issue happened with Leyla Zana who said that Turkish was her second language and used the Kurdish for the parliamentary oath.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused the DTP of heading down a dead-end street by attempting to show Kurdish people are a minority group in Turkey.
[citation needed] The Democratic Society Party claimed that the 10% threshold of the national vote required in order to be represented in the Grand Assembly was aimed at disqualifying it from the parliament.
[45] The next day in a statement, the Supreme Election Committee (Turkish: Yüksek Seçim Kurulu (YSK)) responded to DTP's threat by stating that there was no issue and that they would simply use "larger envelopes".
Akın Birdal joined DTP to enable the party to reach the 20 deputy threshold to form a parliamentary group.
The female deputies (including İstanbul deputy Sebahat Tuncel) are: After the 2009 local elections the DTP had mayors in eight provincial capitals: At the time of 2009 local elections, DTP had mayors in 54 municipalities:[50] One minor municipality in each of the provinces of Adıyaman, Aydın, Iğdır, Kars, Konya and Van.
[51] In this election on 29 March 2009, Democratic Society Party obtained the following votes in these provinces: Erzincan(0,53%), Erzurum (1,24%), Kars (14,66%), Malatya (0,06%), Tunceli (30%), Elazığ (2,51%), Bingöl (33,79%), Muş (37,23%), Ağrı (32,37%), Adıyaman (5,59%), Diyarbakır (65,27%), Siirt (49,43%), Bitlis (34,43%), Van (53,54%), Şanlıurfa (10,49%), Mardin (36,32%) and Hakkâri or Çolamerik (78,97%).