Turkey blocks Kurdish politician's mayoral bid in Batman city
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - Turkish authorities in the Kurdish city of Batman on Friday blocked the mayoral bid of a local politician who hoped to reclaim the administration of his town, currently run by a government-appointed bureaucrat. This came amid vows by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would not allow pro-Kurdish opposition members to hold posts even if they win.
The local electoral council, whose members are also appointed by Ankara's central government, rejected the application submitted by the duly elected mayor, Sabri Ozdemir, to run in the upcoming March 31 nationwide municipal elections as a candidate of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The reason they gave was that there were ongoing legal probes against him.
His lawyers are now preparing a legal challenge to the decision which they deemed unlawful, Kurdistan 24's bureau in the neighboring Diyarbakir Province reported.
The council's ruling came just a month after Turkish police arrested another mayoral candidate in the Kurdish city of Cizre along with 21 other local female politicians.
Batman, an oil-rich city of half a million people and with more than 300 thousand voters, elected Ozdemir as the mayor with 56 percent of the total vote. This totaled 26 percent higher than his nearest rival, a member of the party of then-Prime Minister Erdogan in the 2014 elections.
However, the Turkish Interior Ministry deposed Ozdemir and 18 members of Batman's city council in September 2016 and appointed a "trustee" named Ertug Sevket Aksoy, the Vice Governor, in his stead. This was part of an ongoing crackdown that has seen than 100 other Kurdish mayors forced out of elected office. Over 60 of them remain in jail.
