KURDISTAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF TURKEY

(KDPT)

   The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey was created in 1965 by Faik Bucak (a lawyer from Urfa, Turkey) on the conservative, nationalist model of Mulla Mustafa Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq. Thus, the KDPT was under the influence of the KDP and Barzani. After Bucak's murder in 1966, Serafet-tin Elci became the leader. Splits within the KDPT led to its demise by the early 1970s, although a more radical branch briefly emerged in the 1970s as the Kurdistan Vanguard Workers Party (PPKK), or Pesheng (Vanguard).