Turkish police at siirt municipality, Turkish Kurdistan, May 15, 2020. Photo: ANF
DIYARBAKIR-AMED, Turkey Kurdistan,— Five more elected Kurdish mayors from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party were detained on suspicion of links with PKK militants and replaced by government-appointed trustees, the interior ministry said on Friday.
Of a total of 65 Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors returned in March 2019 elections, 45 have now been replaced by unelected officials, with some detained on terror charges.
“The Erdogan regime once again showed its hostility to the will of the Kurdish people,” the HDP wrote on Twitter, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The mayors of the Kurdish cities of Siirt and Igdir in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur) in eastern Turkey were removed and detained on suspicion of being a member of an armed terror group, the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that the mayors of Kurtalan and Baykan districts in Siirt province were suspended along with Altinova town mayor in Mus province.
The mayors of the three districts had been taken into custody as part of investigations into whether they had produced “terror propaganda” among other accusations, it said.
Human Rights Watch said in February 2020 that Turkish authorities’ removal and arrest of democratically elected Kurdish mayors across Turkish Kurdistan, violates voters’ rights.
Turkey accuses the HDP — the country’s third-largest party — of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
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.
Selahattin Demirtas, Turkey’s top Kurdish politician and former head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has been in jail since 2016, accused of several charges including alleged links to the PKK.
Turkish authorities have also detained 33 people in relation to an armed attack which killed two people in the eastern Kurdish province of Van, governor’s office said on Friday.
The attack on Thursday targeted two municipality personnel and a civilian returning from distributing aid to a neighbourhood placed under quarantine as part of measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
Turkey’s communication director Fahrettin Altun and other officials blamed the PKK for carrying out the attack.
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