Mehmet Sıddık Akış, the recently elected mayor of Turkey’s southeastern-most province of Hakkari, has been taken into custody, as announced by his party on Monday morning. Akış, who belongs to the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, had been elected to his post in local elections on March 31st. In a statement shortly following the DEM Party’s announcement, Turkey’s Interior Ministry announced that regional governor Ali Çelik would be appointed as government trustee in Akış’s place; a regular occurrence in Turkey.
In the press statement from the Interior Ministry, Akış’s alleged ‘management of an armed terror organization’, ‘membership in an armed terror organization’, as well as ‘making propaganda for an armed terror organization’ were listed as reasons for his removal and detention.
The statement explicitly alleges Akış’s membership in the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Clashes between PKK militants and the Turkish Armed Forces have been ongoing for decades. Although civilian unrest in southeastern Anatolia reached a peak in the 1990s, lower level clashes have continued since, with the Turkish military regularly conducting strikes in mountainous regions of northern Iraq alleged to harbor PKK militants.
The Interior Ministry’s statement alleges that Akış served as a high-ranking official in the PKK, where he was responsible for organizing such events as illegal demonstrations, funerals for militants, and engaging in intimidation of local residents and businesses on the PKK’s behalf. Additionally, the statement alleges that Akış was responsible for communication between the PKK and residents of rural villages, as well as child recruitment and ‘ideological indoctrination’.
Return of the ‘trustee system’
Turkey’s Ankara-based central government, run by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), has long made a practice of deposing and replacing democratically elected mayors from pro-Kurdish parties in Turkey’s heavily Kurdish southeastern provinces.
Following 2019’s local elections, which saw the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) win numerous municipalities across southeastern Anatolia, dozens of elected officials were removed from their posts due to alleged PKK connections, after which they were replaced by Ankara-appointed ‘trustees’ belonging to the AKP.
Many of the HDP officials deposed following their 2019 election victories have left Turkey and are now living in exile in Europe.
Prior to Turkey’s local elections on March 31, many in the opposition feared the AKP would once again engage in appointing ‘trustee mayors’ in the event of pro-Kurdish DEM Party victories in the southeast. The removal and the unexpected reinstatement of Van Mayor Abdullah Zeydan, also a DEM Party member, shortly after his election victory in early April added to these fears.
Additionally, the AKP was accused on election day of shipping in large numbers of police and security personnel to vote in southeastern provinces in an attempt to win control over the provinces and prevent pro-Kurdish politicians from regaining seats. Videos circulating on social media showed large buses carrying these personnel arriving at polling stations in the region. While the AKP managed to win in Şırnak province, many other provinces that saw large numbers of ‘transported voters’, such as Iğdır and Ağrı, were nonetheless won by DEM Party politicians.
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Written/translated by Leo Kendrick for Medyascope
