Protests in Turkey after dismissal of democratically elected Kurdish mayors

The Turkish government's recent decision to dismiss several democratically elected Kurdish mayors has provoked numerous protests in the southeast of the country, where the Kurdish minority lives.  

The demonstrations, which have been suppressed by the Turkish police, have involved the mayor of Batman, Gülistan Sönük, of the left-wing pro-Kurdish DEM (formerly HDP) party, Ahmet Türk, mayor of Mardin, and Mehmet Karayilan, councillor of Halfeti in the province of Sanliurfa, both members of the same political party.

In addition to using armoured vehicles with water cannons to disperse the protests, the Turkish authorities have arrested numerous demonstrators. Also, in the provinces of Mardin, Batman and Şanlıurfa all gatherings have been banned for ten days, while in Diyarbakir protests were banned until Wednesday evening.   

Ankara took the decision to dismiss three Kurdish mayors in the southeast of the country, accusing them of terrorism and replacing them with councillors. According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, the three were dismissed for being ‘members of an armed terrorist organisation’ and ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’. 

The move comes four days after the arrest of social democrat Ahmet Özer, mayor of Istanbul's Esenyurt district, who is also accused of being a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the European Union and the United States. 

The DEM has described as a coup d'état the dismissal of the mayors of this political formation, the third force in the Turkish Parliament, which the authorities accuse of having links with the PKK, something the DEM denies. 

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and leader of the Republican People's Party - the largest opposition party - stressed that ‘the right to vote is exclusive to the voters and is not transferable’. ‘The government is losing control,’ he wrote on social media.  

 Ahmet Türk, now former mayor of Mardin and a leading figure in the Kurdish movement, called on his supporters to demonstrate, assuring that they will not take ‘a step back in the struggle for democracy, peace and freedom’. ‘We will never give up. We will not allow the usurpation of the will of the people,’ Türk said. 

The respected Kurdish politician won the last elections with 57.4% of the vote, although he was already replaced and even imprisoned for months in his previous terms, as Turkish authorities accused him of establishing links with PKK fighters.  

In the past, dozens of elected mayors in southeastern Turkey have been removed from office and replaced by government-appointed administrative officials, as was the case in 2016, when Selahattin Demirtas, one of the DEM's former chairmen, was jailed. 

The number of dismissals had decreased significantly in recent years, until last June, when the mayor of the far southeastern Turkish city of Hakkari, a DEM member, was dismissed and sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison after being convicted of ‘terrorism’. 

In this sense, as Kurdish activist and journalist Amina Hussein recalls, this is not the first time that the Turkish government has removed or replaced democratically elected Kurdish mayors in the country. ‘We saw it on 31 or 1 April right after the elections in the Kurdish-majority city of Wan’, she explains.

However, the regional and international situation is different now. ‘With the world's attention on the US elections and Middle East conflicts, Erdogan is taking advantage of this vacuum to carry out his plans or his failed April plan. But it is also different as we are talking about several mayors dismissed; three from the pro-Kurdish DEM party and one from another opposition party (CHP),’ she adds.   

‘The April protests were successful and the government was forced to respect the decision of the voters’, continues Hussein, who considers that the current demonstrations ‘are not of the same size and there is no European or international condemnation‘. ‘Moreover, after Ankara's attack, Erdogan sees it as legitimate to attack the Kurds either in his own country through this plan or in Syria or Iraq through air strikes’, she concludes.  

The PKK claimed responsibility for the 23 October attack in Ankara in which five people were killed and 22 injured. Turkey responded to this attack by bombing sites in Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, leaving dozens dead.