Turkey’s crackdown on mayors amounts to coup, says opposition party
The arrest last week of five mayors from the Peoples’ Democratic Party leaves it with control of just a fifth of the cities it won in an election last year.
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s second-biggest opposition party has accused the government of carrying out a “coup” against elected officials after another five of its mayors were sacked last week, part of a long-running clampdown that has crippled the pro-Kurdish party in local politics.
The Interior Ministry dismissed the mayors from the leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Friday, accusing them of ties with terrorists, and appointed state trustees in their place. All five are now in detention.
The latest move means the HDP has lost control of 51 of the 65 cities where it won local elections in March 2019. The mayors-elect of six towns and cities were blocked at the outset from even taking up their posts, and another 45 have been stripped of their offices since then. Human Rights Watch has said the government has “effectively canceled the results” of the election in the predominately Kurdish southeast.
“Not all coups are staged with guns,” HDP co-chair Pervin Buldun said on Saturday in a statement streamed live. “It is still a coup when a representative elected by the people is removed from duty and someone else is appointed in his place.”
