Kemal Okuyan
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General Secretary Kemal Okuyan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General Secretary of Communist Party of Turkey | |
| Assumed office 2001[1]-present | |
| Preceded by | Aydemir Güler |
| Member of Communist Party of Turkey Central Committee | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1962 (age 63–64) |
| Party | TKP |
| Occupation | Politician |
Kemal Okuyan (born 18 May 1962) is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP).
On May 18, 1962, he was born in the United States, where his mother, Prof. Dr. Melahat Okuyan, was working in the healthcare field. Later, Melahat Okuyan and her husband, Muhsin Akça Okuyan, who would make significant contributions to microbiology and the fight against AIDS in Turkey decided to return to Turkey, and their child moved to Ankara before turning one.
Political life
He started his political activities in the Workers' Party of Turkey. After criticising the party's politics based on national democratic revolution, he took part in a splinter group formed around the journal Socialist Power (Sosyalist İktidar) and he was among the first writers of the journal.[2] After the 1980 Turkish coup d'état this group ceased to work. In 1986 he and his comrades founded the Gelenek journal around which they formed the nucleus of a traditional communist party.[3]
In the early 1990s, Okuyan and his comrades founded the Socialist Turkey Party. This party was banned by the Constitutional Court of Turkey in 1993. That year, they founded the Socialist Power Party. This party changed its name to the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) following the 2001 Congress. After the TKP split in 2014, he resigned as general secretary and founded the Communist Party with Aydemir Güler.[4] Okuyan was elected general secretary of the Central Committee after the Communist Party of Turkey was rebuilt in 2017.
