ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Diyarbakir’s public prosecutor has launched an investigation into the presumptive winner of the city’s mayoral election based on alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The investigation targets Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli, mayoral candidate for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Diyarbakir who won the vote according to unofficial results, and Hulya Alokmen, who has been designated by HDP to share the mayoral office with Mizrakli under the party’s gender-balance system whereby all top positions are jointly filled by a man and a woman.
Berdan Ozturk, a HDP member of parliament for Agri, is also named in the investigation.
All three are alleged to have attended an event in Diyarbakir on Thursday where pro-PKK songs were sung.
Alokmen told Rudaw English late on Friday that she has not been officially notified of the probe and has only heard about it through media reports.
“Yesterday, we were celebrating the election victory,” she said. “The event was organized by [HDP’s] provincial office in Diyarbakir. All the co-chairs who won in the election met there. [The prosecutor] wanted to launch an investigation into this event. We have been under pressure since the election began. All our steps were monitored.”
The HDP officials are accused of “hailing PKK terror members,” state-run Anadolu Agency reported, citing a judicial source.
Alokmen denied the accusation. “We did not do anything illegal,” she said.
Video of the event shared by HDP shows a full room chanting a refrain from ‘Cerxa feleke’ (The wheels of revolution), commonly associated with the PKK: “From the walls of prisons to the tops of mountains, the red flag was raised… Our leader is the Workers’ Party.”
Rudaw was not able to verify whether or not Alokmen, Mizrakli, and Ozturk joined in.
The three risk losing their positions if found guilty.
In 2016, the government replaced tens of HDP mayors with pro-government trustees and jailed some elected mayors, including former mayor of Diyarbakir Gultan Kisanak, accused of terror ties.
Alokmen said they are not afraid of potential criminal charges. “We expected this when we were nominated,” she said, adding the government will not find it easy to replace them with trustees because of people’s pressure, but “they can still find a way to do so.”
On the campaign trail, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they would replace HDP mayors with trustees if they were discovered to have links to the PKK.
HDP “is saying that they will regain places administered by trustees,” Erdogan said at a rally in Yozgat on February 25. He threatened to “immediately assign trustees if you send government money to Qandil,” referring to the PKK headquarters in the Kurdistan Region’s mountains.
The election results, still to be officially declared because of recounts and challenges, served up wins and losses across the board. HDP failed to gain Kurdish-majority provinces like Agri, Sirnak, Bitlis, and Tunceli. But Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) appears to have lost the capital Ankara, the biggest city Istanbul, and the coastal city of Izmir to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
HDP has claimed a role in AKP’s key losses. The party focused its campaign in the Kurdish southeast and urged supporters to vote strategically, casting ballots for opposition candidates where there was no HDP name on the ticket.