Turkey removes mayors of three major Kurdish cities

Bloomberg





Turkey yesterday fired the elected mayors of three major Kurdish-dominated cities in the nation’s southeast and detained more than 400 people in a crackdown as it prepares to push a Syrian Kurdish militia away from its border.

The mayors of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van were removed for their alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an autonomy-seeking Kurdish group classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU.

Police used water cannons to disperse hundreds of Kurdish protesters outside the mayor’s office in Diyarbakir, footage by Arti TV showed.

Protesters hold a banner reading “The will of the people cannot be usurped,” as they take part in a demonstration in front of Peoples’ Democracy Party headquarters in Istanbul yesterday. Photo: AFP

While Turkish authorities have in the past evicted Kurdish officials at times of heightened political tension at home, this time the moves were seen as linked to a long-promised military operation in northern Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to carve out a frontier buffer zone that will be off-limits to the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which authorities say has links to the PKK.

The seizure of three Turkish municipalities with a population of about 3.7 million people where the PKK traditionally enjoys strong backing aims to prevent any support for the militants.

However, it also renewed accusations that Erdogan and his allies are damaging Turkey’s democracy by attacking the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) after it swept back to office in ballots in the southeast and helped Turkey’s main opposition party to win mayoral races in the capital and the nation’s commercial hub.

“All political parties and society should react to this coup against the will of the people,” HDP lawmaker Garo Paylan said on Twitter. “If you remain silent, then the next in line could be Ankara and Istanbul.”

Erdogan warned before local elections in March that his government would not hesitate to replace HDP mayors if they were deemed to be linked to Kurdish militants.

The HDP has faced a broad clampdown since it won enough votes to enter parliament in 2015. Since then, the government has jailed hundreds of Kurdish politicians and seized about 100 municipalities in the southeast.

The HDP denies it is influenced by the PKK and blames the group’s armed rebellion on a history of repressive policies toward Kurds.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense said that airstrikes yesterday targeted a Turkish army convoy inside Syria, killing three civilians and wounding 12 others, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense said.

The convoy was attacked while heading to a Turkish observation post in the rebel-held stronghold of Idlib, where Syrian troops have been on the offensive since late April, the ministry said.

Additional reporting by AP