[2] Although SODEP, which existed in Turkish political life for a short period of time, was a centre-left party that wanted to bring together the electorate of the dissolved CHP, its difference from the People's Party was that it focused on adopting and implementing the ideology of social democracy with its universal values, not Kemalist Turkish nationalism and laicism.
[1] In this context, SODEP pursued a strategy that aimed at democratising the capitalist system and the bourgeois parliamentary regime as much as possible, social justice reforms in favour of the working classes in income distribution and reforms that expanded the space for freedom in social life.
[1] After the coup of 1980, all political parties were dissolved by the military government (ruling through the National Security Council or Turkish: MGK) regardless of their ideology, on 16 October 1981.
This gave MGK the power to limit the number of parties that would stand in the coming parliamentary elections.
SODEP was founded on 6 July 1983[3] by former supporters of the banned Republican People's Party, which is usually credited as the founder of Turkish republic in 1923.
It was clear that the choice of ex-CHP voters was SODEP - although the HP was still the main opposition party in parliament.
Erdal İnönü and Aydın Güven Gürkan, the new leader of the HP, met and agreed on a plan to merge the parties.