Before the formation of the party, socialist parties or groupings only existed among the Ottoman Empire's minorities, the Selanik predominantly Jewish Socialist Workers' Federation and Bulgarian left-wing party called People's Federative Party (Bulgarian Section), as well as to some Bulgarian narrow socialists, who worked there.[1] On the other hand, there were the Istanbul Greek Socialist Center, the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.[2] As Ezel Kural Shaw has written in her History of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, the Ottoman Socialist Party "gained its main support from the Armenian and Bulgarian groups in the Parliament".[3]