An elected official hasn’t run Caldiran, a town of 67,000 people near Turkey’s border with Iran, since February 2017.
That’s when the former co-mayor, Faruk Demir, was dismissed by presidential decree and placed in pre-trial detention for 11 months on terror charges. A state-appointed trustee took over municipal functions in Caldiran as in nearly 100 other municipalities — most of which were run by officials affiliated with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — that were impacted during mass purges stemming from a 2016 coup attempt.