 After surviving a closure case in 2007, on December 11, 2009, the Constitutional Court of Turkey voted to ban the DTP, ruling that the party had links to the PKK and was guilty of spreading "terrorist propaganda".Chairman Ahmet Türk and co-chair Aysel Tuğluk were expelled from Parliament, and they and 35 other party members, including Leyla Zana, were banned from joining any political party for five years.The 19 DTP members that remained in parliament joined the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which had already been formed in anticipation of the ban.