Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul, April 1, 2019. Photo: AP
DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey Kurdistan,— Istanbul’s mayor on Saturday hit out at the Turkish government’s ouster of three pro-Kurdish municipality chiefs during a visit to the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan, in the southeast of the country.
Ekrem Imamoglu of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who won in the June re-run of the Istanbul vote, called Ankara’s move an act of “carelessness”.
Imamoglu’s visit was the latest sign of warming relations between the CHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
The mayors of the eastern Kurdish cities of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van — all HDP members elected in March — were sacked on August 19 over suspected links to Kurdish PKK militants.
But the Kurdish HDP party says it is being targeted because of its strong opposition to the president.
Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli was Diyarbakir mayor before he was replaced by a government-appointed governor.
“There can be neither democracy nor rule of law in a place where elected officials do not leave via the ballot box,” Imamoglu told reporters in Diyarbakir.
He had met with ousted Mardin mayor, Ahmet Turk — a key figure in the Kurdish movement — and Mizrakli, who said Imamoglu’s visit offered “a glimmer of hope and was a source of strength for us”.
His visit to the Kurdish-majority region is significant for the secular CHP, which has not always had easy relations with the HDP.
But since Imamoglu’s election success was significantly supported by the votes of Kurds, as the HDP put forward no candidate in Istanbul, this relationship has improved.
The Istanbul mayor also paid tribute to Tahir Elci, head of the bar association in Diyarbakir and a campaigner for Kurdish rights, during a visit to his grave.
Elci was shot dead during clashes between Kurdish militants and police officers in 2015. Earlier in 2019 the bar association in Diyarbakir said three Turkish police officers should be treated as suspects in the 2015 murder of a prominent rights lawyer.
Last May, the CHP’s presidential candidate Muharrem Ince visited the imprisoned ex-HDP chief Selahattin Demirtas ahead of presidential elections in June 2018.
The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy in Turkish Kurdistan for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 79-million population. More than 40,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish rebels, have been killed in the conflict.
A large Kurdish community in Turkey and worldwide openly sympathise with PKK rebels and Abdullah Ocalan, who founded the PKK group in 1974 and currently serving a life sentence in Turkey, has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide according to observers.
Read more about Turkey’s policy against Kurds
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP