Murat Bozlak

Murat Bozlak (30 December 1952 – 4 January 2015) was a Kurdish politician active in several political parties. He was the president of the People's Democracy Party (HADEP) and a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Bozlak was a Kurdish politician and a founding member of the Social Democracy Party (SODEP), the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP), the People's Labor Party (HEP), the Democracy Party (DEP) and the HADEP. The first two parties were dissolved, while the latter three were banned by the Turkish constitutional court.

Education and early life Bozlak graduated from Ankara University Law Faculty and following worked as an independent lawyer. Following the detention of DEP deputies in March 1994 and a move to close the DEP, he founded the HADEP in May 1994. In the same month he was arrested and sentenced to a prison term of one year for speeches he held in 1993. Bozlak was able to leave the prison in April 1997. He shortly delivered the presidency of the HADEP to Turan Demir in September 1999. For the general elections of November 2002, in worries of a party ban of the HADEP, he resigned from its presidency and joined the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP). But his candidacy for the Diyarbakır province was invalidated by the Turkish electoral authorities. In his stead, his wife Zeycan Bozlak became the DEHAP candidate for Diyarbakır. and Bozlak was banned from politics for five years. for the Labor, Democracy and Freedom Bloc supported by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). In 2014, Bozlak and 26 other MPs of the BDP joined the HDP, which following formed a parliamentary group.

Political positions He maintained that Kurdistan was separated into four parts after World War I and included into a "national-colonial system" and reserved for the Kurds the right for "self-determination". He then also wanted that the Kurds in Turkey, were able to be recognized as such and allowed to organize themselves democratically. He was married and a father to three children.