Published on: 04/11/2024 – 1:12 p.m.

2 minutes

The mayors of the southeastern cities of Mardin and Batman, as well as Halfeti, a district in Sanliurfa province, were dismissed and replaced by administrators, the Interior Ministry said .

All three belong to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party, and were elected in local elections in March, when opposition candidates won in many cities, including Istanbul.

Ahmet Turk, 82, was mayor of Mardin, while Gulistan Sonuk served in Batman and Mehmet Karayilan in Halfeti.

In a statement, the ministry outlined a series of allegations against them, ranging from belonging to an armed group to spreading propaganda in favor of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Since 1984, the PKK has led an insurgency against the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people have died.

It is included on the blacklist of “terrorist” groups by Turkey and its Western allies.

Kurds make up around 20 percent of Türkiye’s total population.

DEM quickly denounced the dismissal of the mayors as “a major attack on the right of the Kurdish people to vote and be elected.”

“The government has made a habit of seizing what it could not win in the elections by using the judiciary, the police and the system of corporate officers,” DEM said in a statement.

Turk, a prominent Kurdish politician who had previously been fired twice, was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison for alleged membership of the PKK over his involvement in a series of protests in 2014.

He was serving while awaiting the outcome of an appeal.

At the time, the HDP party – now DEM – called for protests against Ankara’s failure to send troops to protect Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town in northeast Syria overrun by militants. Islamic State (IS) group.

“No turning back”

Writing about X, Turk promised not to give up.

“We will not back down in the fight for democracy, peace and freedom. We will not allow the will of the people to be usurped!”

The Mardin governor’s office banned protests in the city for 10 days.

“The government has lost control,” the powerful opposition mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, wrote on X.

“The right to elect belongs only to the voters and cannot be transferred,” he said.

Imamoglu, a key figure in the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) who is likely to run as a candidate in the 2028 presidential election, said he would call an emergency meeting of the Turkish Union of municipalities (UMT).

The latest firings come just days after another CHP mayor was arrested for alleged links to the PKK in an Istanbul neighborhood and replaced by an administrator.

Ahmet Ozer, 64, mayor of Esenyurt district, was arrested on Wednesday.

Both the CHP and DEM condemned his arrest as politically motivated, with DEM calling it a “political coup.”

The wave of layoffs came after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed full support for efforts to reach out to Turkey’s Kurds, describing them as a “window of opportunity.”

But he warned that this call was not addressed to the “barons of terrorism” in Iraq and Syria.

Over the years, the Turkish government has removed dozens of elected Kurdish mayors in the southeast and replaced them with its own administrators.

Six months ago, election authorities removed the DEM’s elected mayor in the eastern city of Van and replaced him with the losing candidate from Erdogan’s AKP party, sparking furious protests.

Following these negative reactions, the winning candidate was subsequently reinstated.

© 2024 AFP