Three mayors from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM, formerly HDP), Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, have been removed from office after being accused of…”terrorism,” the Turkish Interior Ministry said today.
The mayors of the major cities of Mardin and Batman and the mayor of the town of Khalfeti, all three of which are located in southeastern Turkey where Kurdish people mainly live, were replaced by state-appointed governors, the ministry said in a statement.
The mayor of Mardin, Ahmet Turk, a popular figure in the Kurdish movement and aged 82, had already been deposed and jailed for months during previous terms as Turkish authorities accused him of links to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants.
Turk and the other two pro-Kurdish mayors were elected in local elections in March, which marked a broad victory for the opposition over President Erdogan’s Islamist-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The oustings come days after the arrest on PKK-related charges of a mayor of an Constantinople municipality from Turkey’s main opposition party, the social-democratic CHP.
