Iraq News Now

Turkey on Monday replaced Kurdish mayors with state officials

in three cities and detained more than 400 people for suspected militant links,

the Interior Ministry said, a move likely to fuel tensions in the mainly

Kurdish southeast.
The ministry also said it had launched an operation with some

2,300 commandos against militant fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers

Party (PKK) in southeastern provinces.
The mayors of three major

southeastern cities - Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van - are accused of various crimes

including membership of a terrorist organization and spreading terrorist group

propaganda, the ministry said in a statement.
Riot police fired water cannon on small groups of people

protesting against the mayors’ dismissal in central Diyarbakir, where police

sealed off the municipality headquarters with metal barriers, Reuters TV video

showed.
President Tayyip Erdogan had

warned ahead of local elections in March of such a move against elected

officials if they were found to have had connections to the PKK.
“For the health of the

investigations, they have been temporarily removed from their posts as a

precaution,” the ministry said, referring to Diyarbakir Mayor Selcuk Mizrakli,

Mardin Mayor Ahmet Turk and Van Mayor Bedia Ozgokce Ertan.
Police detained 418 people in

29 provinces in a related investigation targeting suspects with links to the

PKK, the ministry added.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’

Democratic Party (HDP), to which the three mayors belong, said they had been

dismissed “on an order based on lies and illegal justifications”.
“This is a new and clear

political coup. It is a clear and hostile stance against the political will of

the Kurdish people,” the HDP executive board said in a written statement.
It said the three mayors had

been elected with between 53% to 63% of the vote in their cities in March and

called for support from other political parties.
“This is not just the problem of the HDP and the Kurdish people.

It is the shared problem of all Turkey’s peoples and all democratic forces,” it

added.
Main Opposition Slams Dismissals
Veli Agbaba, deputy leader of

the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), wrote on Twitter that the

dismissals were tantamount to fascism and a blow against democracy, while

Istanbul’s CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoglu also slammed the move.
“Negating the will of the

people is unacceptable,” he wrote on Twitter. Imamoglu himself was removed from

office over irregularities shortly after coming to power in the March election,

but won a re-run election in June.
More unusually, Turkey’s

former president Abdullah Gul and ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, once

allies of Erdogan from his AK Party who have emerged as potential political

opponents, said on Twitter the dismissals were out of line with democracy.
The removal of the mayors

echoed the dismissal of dozens of mayors in 2016 over similar accusations, part

of a purge that began after a failed coup. Nearly 100 mayors and thousands of

party members were jailed in a crackdown that drew expressions of concern from

the United States and European Union.
Erdogan warned before the

March elections that HDP mayors could again be dismissed if they, like their

predecessors, were deemed to have ties to militants.
Erdogan frequently accuses

the HDP of links to the PKK, which is designated a terrorist group by Turkey,

the EU and the United States. The HDP denies such links.
The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in

1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The Interior Ministry said

recent operations had led to PKK militant numbers falling to their lowest level

in 30 years, with the number of fighters in Turkey falling to some 600 from

around 1,800-2,000 in the past.
Announcing the new operation

against PKK militants, launched on Sunday in the provinces of Van, Sirnak and

Hakkari, the ministry published images showing security forces firing machine

guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
The security forces destroyed

43 caves and shelters used by the PKK, the ministry said, adding that

operations would continue until all militants in the areas were “neutralized”.