ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Angry protestors, led by opposition politicians on Monday, hit the streets in Turkey hours after Ankara removed three Kurdish mayors on “terror” charges and replaced them with trustees.
The Turkish interior ministry ousted the Kurdish mayors of Mardin and Batman, as well as the Halfeti district in Sanliurfa province, and replaced them with government-appointed trustees.
All three mayors are from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). They include veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk of Mardin, Gulistan Sonuk of Batman, and Mehmet Karayilan of Sanliurfa’s Halfeti district.
Despite an immediate ban on gatherings and demonstrations, thousands of protestors hit the streets across Turkey, mainly in the Kurdish provinces, to condemn the move.
In Mardin, Turk urged people to defy the ban and gather in front of the municipality building. They were also joined by DEM Party leadership as well as the leader from the country’s main opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ozgur Ozel.
“On one hand, you try to convince people that you’re seeking a solution for something you refuse even to call a problem [the Kurdish issue], and on the other, you appoint trustees over the same person who comes to mind first when you ask, ‘Who advocates for peace in Turkish politics?’” Ozel told the crown in Mardin, referring to Turk.
“There is neither reason nor conscience here,” he added.
Turk, 82, who won the local elections in March with a landslide victory, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in May for alleged involvement in deadly protests in October 2014, the case better known as the Kobane trials.
Alongside Turk, both Sonuk and Karayilan have been handed prison sentences for alleged “membership in a terrorist organization” charges, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“They created expectations of a solution, spoke of a ‘new process’ and ‘normalization,’ but today, on November 4, they repeated the political purge they carried out exactly eight years ago. They are liars, they are hypocrites, they are two-faced,” DEM Party co-Chair Tuncer Bakirhan told the protesters in Mardin.
“When they say ‘solution,’ we get oppression, when they say ‘normalization,’ we get trustees appointed, and when they say ‘justice,’ we’re met with injustice,” he added.
After the politicians left, the police reportedly used water cannons to disperse the crowd.
The appointment of the trustees came less than a month after Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ally, called for allowing the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to be allowed to address the Turkish parliament and call for the end of the PKK. The speech raised expectations for the re-emergence of a peace process in Turkey.
The Turkish government has recently turned up the heat against the DEM Party and its elected mayors. In June, a Turkish court sentenced the party’s mayor in Hakkari (Colemerg), Mehmet Siddik Akis, to 19.5 years in prison for alleged affiliation with the PKK. Akis was removed from his position days before the court ruling and was replaced by a state-appointed trustee.
Dozens of Kurdish mayors affiliated with other pro-Kurdish parties have been dismissed and replaced with trustees for terror-related charges since 2016, with many of them being sentenced to jail. The DEM Party denies any links to the PKK and maintains it is merely pro-Kurdish.
On Wednesday, Kurdish mayor Ahmet Ozer of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district from the CHP was arrested due to alleged PKK links and quickly replaced with a trustee.
Thousands of Kurdish politicians and supporters of pro-Kurdish parties, mainly DEM Party’s predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), have been jailed in the past decade for PKK-linked charges. A large number of them remain behind bars.
DEM Party scored several significant victories in the March election. It took Diyarbakir, Mardin, Batman, Siirt, Hakkari, Van, and Igdir provinces, which its sister party, the HDP, won in 2019 only to have their mayors removed because of alleged links with Kurdish rebels and replaced by state-appointed administrators.
