Turkey sacks 3 mayors in Kurdish majority southeast

ISTANBUL
Turkey on Monday sacked three mayors in the Kurdish-majority southeast on alleged terrorism charges, despite Ankara’s efforts to seek a rapprochement with the Kurdish community. In a sweep, the mayors of the southeastern cities of Mardin and Batman as well as Halfeti — a district in the Sanliurfa province — were removed from their positions and replaced with trustees, the interior ministry said.
All three belong to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party, and were elected in March’s local elections when opposition candidates won in numerous towns and cities, including Istanbul. Ahmet Turk, 82, was Mardin’s mayor, while Gulistan Sonuk was serving in Batman and Mehmet Karayilan in Halfeti.
In a statement, the ministry outlined a string of allegations against them, from membership in an armed group to disseminating propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Since 1984, the PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has killed thousand and is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies.
Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey’s overall population. DEM swifty denounced the mayors’ removal 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,” it said in a statement on X.
Turk, a prominent Kurdish politician who was dismissed twice before, was in May sentenced to 10 years prison on charges of PKK membership for his alleged involvement in a series of deadly 2014 protests. At the time, the HDP party — now DEM — called for protests over Ankara’s failure to send in troops to protect Kobane, a Kurdish city in northeastern Syria which was being overrun by the Islamic State (IS) group militants.
Writing on X, Turk promised not to give up. “We will not step back from the fight for democracy, peace and freedom. We will not allow usurpation of the people’s will!”Turk’s replacement, the Mardin governor, banned protests in the city for 10 days. – ‘Political coup’ -Their dismissal comes days after another mayor from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) party was arrested for alleged PKK ties in an Istanbul district and replaced by a trustee.
Ahmet Ozer, 64, mayor of Esenyurt district, was arrested on Wednesday. Both the CHP and DEM slammed his arrest, denouncing it as politically motivated.
The wave of dismissals came after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed full support for efforts to reach out to Turkey’s Kurds, describing it as a “window of opportunity”.
Over the years, the Turkish government has removed dozens of elected Kurdish mayors in the southeast and replaced them with its own trustees. Six months ago, the election authority removed 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. As a result of the backlash, the winning candidate was later reinstated.