The Albany Gazette - Turkey sacks 3 pro-Kurdish party mayors over alleged 'terror' ties

In a sweep, the mayors of the southeastern cities of Mardin and Batman as well as Halfeti -- a district in the Sanliurfa province -- were removed from their positions and replaced with trustees, the interior ministry said.

All three belong to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party, and were elected in March's local elections, when opposition candidates won in numerous towns and cities, including Istanbul.

Ahmet Turk, 82, was Mardin's mayor, while Gulistan Sonuk was serving in Batman and Mehmet Karayilan in Halfeti.

In a statement, the ministry outlined a string of allegations against them, from membership in an armed group to disseminating propaganda for the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Since 1984, the PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people have died.

It is blacklisted as a "terror" group by Turkey and its Western allies.

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

DEM swiftly denounced the mayors' removal as "a major attack on the Kurdish people's right to vote and be elected""

"The government has adopted the habit of snatching what it couldn't win through elections through using the judiciary, the police and the trustee system," DEM said in a statement.

Turk, a prominent Kurdish politician who was dismissed twice before, was in May sentenced to 10 years jail for alleged PKK membership over his involvement in a series of 2014 protests.

He was serving pending the outcome of an appeal.

At the time, the HDP party -- now DEM -- called for protests over Ankara's failure to send in troops to protect Kobane, a Kurdish-majority city in northeastern Syria which was being overrun by the Islamic State (IS) group militants.

- 'No step back' -

Writing on X, Turk promised not to give up.

"We will not step back from the fight for democracy, peace and freedom. We will not allow usurpation of the people's will!"

Mardin governor's office banned protests in the city for 10 days.

"The government has lost control," Istanbul's powerful opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu wrote on X.

"The right to elect only belongs to voters and cannot be transferred," he said.

Imamoglu, a key figure in the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) who is likely to run as a candidate in the 2028 presidential election, said he would convene an emergency meeting of the Turkish Union of Municipalities (UMT).

The latest dismissals come just days after another CHP mayor was arrested for alleged PKK ties in an Istanbul district and replaced by a trustee.

Ahmet Ozer, 64, mayor of Esenyurt district, was arrested on Wednesday.

Both the CHP and DEM condemned his arrest as politically motivated, with DEM calling it a "political coup".

The wave of dismissals came after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed full support for efforts to reach out to Turkey's Kurds, describing it as a "window of opportunity".

But he warned the appeal was not directed at "terror barons" in Iraq and Syria.

Over the years, the Turkish government has removed dozens of elected Kurdish mayors in the southeast and replaced them with its own trustees.

Six months ago, the election authority removed DEM's elected mayor in the eastern city of Van and replaced him with the losing candidate from Erdogan's AKP party, sparking furious protests.

As a result of the backlash, the winning candidate was later reinstated.

(R.White--TAG)