Angry protesters hit the streets of several cities in mainly-Kurdish southeastern Turkey on Monday after the authorities sacked three mayors on “terrorism” charges, sparking a rebuke from Europe’s leading rights organisation.
It was the latest move by the Turkish authorities to dismiss officials elected in March’s local elections and replace them with government-appointed trustees.
The interior ministry’s move to remove the mayors of the cities of Mardin, Batman and of Halfeti district was slammed by the opposition as anti-democratic.
Europe’s top rights body, the Council of Europe, expressed “grave concern” about Ankara’s “long-standing practice of appointing trustees” which it said was “undermining the very nature of local democracy”.
Ahmet Turk, 82, Gulistan Sonuk and Mehmet Karayilan, respectively of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti, all belonged to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party, and were elected in March when opposition candidates won in many areas, including Istanbul.
Despite the authorities quickly banning any protests, more than 2,000 people hit the streets of the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir, shouting: “Get out, trustees!”, an AFP journalist reported.
In Mardin, Turk also defied the ban, urging people to protest outside the town hall where he was later joined by opposition leader Ozgur Ozel, head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
“We must all raise our voices against this unlawfulness, this anti-democratic behaviour which defies the will of the people,” he said in a video on X.
After they left, police tried to disperse the protesters with water canon and rubber bullets, T24 news channel and MedyaScope TV reported, saying some hurled stones at them.
It was unclear how many people were there.
Police also used water canon and pepper gas to disperse protesters in Batman, arresting 75 people for trying to get into the town hall, T24 news said.
They also arrested a local reporter covering the protests, the MLSA rights group said.
‘Attack on Kurdish right to vote’
The ministry outlined a string of allegations against them, from belonging to an armed group to disseminating propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Since 1984, the PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people have died. It is blacklisted as a “terror” group by Turkey and its Western allies.
Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey’s overall population.
DEM denounced the dismissals as “a major attack on the Kurdish people’s right to vote and be elected”.
“The government has adopted the habit of snatching what it couldn’t win through elections through using the judiciary, the police and the trustee system,” a DEM statement said.
Turk, a prominent Kurdish politician who has previously been involved in mediation efforts to resolve the Kurdish conflict, has previously been dismissed twice before.
He was sentenced to 10 years in May in connection with a wave of 2014 protests over Ankara’s failure to send in troops to protect a Kurdish-majority city in northeastern Syria which was being overrun by the Islamic State (IS) group militants.
Pending the outcome of an appeal, he was serving as mayor.
‘Lost control’
Istanbul’s powerful opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said the government had “lost control”.
“The right to elect belongs only to voters and cannot be transferred,” he wrote on X.
Imamoglu, a key figure in the CHP who is likely to contest the 2028 presidential election, said he would call an emergency meeting of the Turkish Union of Municipalities (UMT).
The latest dismissals came just days after Ahmet Ozer, another CHP mayor was arrested for alleged PKK ties in an Istanbul district and replaced by a trustee, sparking an angry response from the opposition.
The dismissals came after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed full support for efforts to reach out to Turkey’s Kurds.
Over the years, Ankara has removed dozens of elected Kurdish mayors in the southeast and replaced them with its own trustees.
In April, the election authority removed DEM’s elected mayor in Van and replaced him with the losing candidate from Erdogan’s AKP party, sparking furious protests.
Following the backlash, the winning candidate was later reinstated.
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