Turkiye unseats Kurdish mayors in crackdown after peace proposal

Turkiye dismissed the pro-Kurdish mayors of three south-eastern cities on Monday for alleged ties to Kurdish militants, Reuters has reported. According to Turkiye’s interior ministry, it sacked the mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party in the cities of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti, replacing them with government-appointed administrators.

The DEM, the third largest party in Turkiye’s parliament, condemned the dismissals. The party said that they stand in sharp contradiction of the recent overture from Ankara that had pointed to a possible peace process in the south east of the country.

“It is a repetition of the bankrupt attacks that have been continuing since 1994 to eliminate the Kurdish people from democratic politics,” said the DEM. “While we were expecting a hand to be extended for a solution and peace, the will of the people was violated.”

The three dismissed mayors deny various charges against them and are appealing against previous convictions. Dozens of pro-Kurdish mayors from DEM’s predecessor party were removed from their posts on similar charges in the past.

This is the third time that Mardin’s mayor Ahmet Turk, 82, has been dismissed after being elected. He was one of many Kurdish politicians convicted in May for instigating large-scale protests in 2014.

Last week, a mayor from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was arrested after prosecutors accused him of membership of the PKK, designated as a terrorist group by NATO member Turkiye and its Western allies. Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkiye’s population of 85 million.

In June, the state unseated a DEM mayor in Hakkari province, two months after local elections where the party won 75 municipalities.

Last month President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ally Devlet Bahceli, leader of Turkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), suggested that Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, jailed since 1999, should go to parliament and announce the end of the conflict in south-east Turkiye and the PKK’s surrender in exchange for the possibility of his release.

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