The Turkish authorities detained four more popularly elected mayors in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast today, part of an ongoing campaign against the Kurdish-friendly People's Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. A fifth mayor was also fired but not detained.
The mayors were hauled away from their homes, stripped of office and replaced with government-appointed trustees, a pattern that has been repeated across the Kurdish-dominated region before and since the nationwide municipal elections in March 2019.