Anger Over The Removal Of Pro-Kurdish Mayors In Turkey

Mardin, Turkey, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Apr, 2020 ) :The mix of fury and disappointment among residents was palpable inside a cafe in the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin after the government replaced the popular mayor with a trustee.

One year on from local elections, 40 out of 65 municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are now under the control of government-appointed trustees.

In Mardin, the HDP's Ahmet Turk, won 56.2 percent of the vote in March 2019.

But in August he was one of the first, along with those in nearby Diyarbakir and Van, to be removed and replaced by the government.

Six months after the move, residents in Mardin, where the governor now runs the city of over 800,000 people, were especially critical of a lack of service and development.

"No one bothers, no one wants to do anything, and no one raises their voice. We're speaking to you now, who knows what will happen to us tomorrow?" cafe manager Firat Kayatar told AFP during a visit late February.

"They may as well not hold elections in the southeast because they had two elections and after both, they appointed trustees," Kayatar, who lives in the old city, said.

"No one listens anyway," one of the cafe's customers, Abdulaziz, 57, chipped in. "We can't complain to anyone. (The governor) brings bananas but we need bread." Another man nearby who did not give his name said young people went to university but were unable to find a job.

"This is the problem Mardin faces too," he says.

The party described the mayors' removals as an "attack" on Kurds but the government has accused the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey's overall population.

The HDP accused Ankara last month of making it "even harder for the Kurds to fight the coronavirus" through the "repression of Kurdish democratic institutions, their municipalities in particular."Such actions are not new. Ankara removed 95 HDP mayors after the party won 102 municipalities in 2014.

"When it comes to the HDP, just slapping trumped-up terror charges is the easiest way to go and it's just a political attempt to destroy their legitimacy," said Turkey director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) Emma Sinclair-Webb.