Ankara Dismisses Mayors Of 3 Turkish Cities Over Links To Kurdistan Workers' Party

Mayors for the cities of Van, Diyarbakir and Mardin in east Turkey were dismissed over their alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara has designated as a terrorist organization, the Turkish Interior Ministry said in a statement on Monday

ANKARA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th August, 2019) Mayors for the cities of Van, Diyarbakir and Mardin in east Turkey were dismissed over their alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara has designated as a terrorist organization, the Turkish Interior Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

"The PKK structures used for their illegal purposes several mayors who have provided this terrorist organization with financial, transport and administrative assistance. An investigation has found that the mayors of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van, Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli, Ahmet Turk and Bedia Ozgokce Ertan, have been dismissed," the ministry said.

According to the statement, the dismissed officials are to be replaced by acting mayors. Law enforcement has conducted searches in the former mayors' offices.

A total of 418 people in 19 Turkish provinces have also been detained over suspicions of having links to the PKK as part of a large-scale PKK probe, the ministry added.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party said in a statement later in the day that the dismissal of the mayors by Ankara was a "political coup.

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"Our Municipal Co-chairs, who were elected with 63% of the vote in Diyarbakir, 56% of the vote in Mardin and 53% of the vote in Van, have been removed from duty with an Interior Ministry order based on lies and unlawful grounds. A severe operation of detentions targeting our municipal council members and employees continues at this moment. This is a new and clear political coup," the statement said.

The PKK is officially listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey. Ankara has been fighting the PKK, which seeks to establish a Kurdish autonomy in Turkey, since the early 1980s. The Turkish government and the PKK agreed on a ceasefire in 2013, but it collapsed just two years later after several terror attacks allegedly committed by PKK militants.

Turkish security forces carry out regular anti-PKK raids across the country. In late May, Ankara launched Operation Claw targeting PKK militants in northern Iraq.