These were the words of Tülay Hatimoğulları, co-chair of the DEM Party, responding to the detention of the recently elected DEM Party co-mayor of Hakkâri (Colemêrg). Mehmet Sıddık Akış won the municipal elections held at the end of March. Despite a far from level playing field, Akış received 48.92% of the vote, while the candidate from President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) received 46.59%. Hakkâri is the principal city of the province of the same name, nestled in the mountains of the far southeast of modern Turkey. Together with its surrounding villages and neighbourhoods it makes up a municipality of around 78,000 inhabitants. Although Akış considered himself as co-mayor, alongside his female counterpart, the DEM Party’s co-leadership system is not officially recognised, and Akış was the official mayor of Hakkâri.
On Monday it was announced that Akış had been dismissed from his post and detained by the police in Van, where he had been staying the night; that the municipality had been put under the control of the state, with the role of mayor taken over by the government-appointed Governor of Hakkâri, Ali Çelik; and that all forms of demonstration and protest were banned in the city for 10 days. For the first 24 hours of his detention Akış was denied access to a lawyer, but by Wednesday, he had been tried and sentenced to 19 ½ years in prison for “membership of a terrorist organisation”. The trial was closed to both DEM Party leaders and journalists.
The reason given for Akış’ detention was a case against him and others that had been filed in 2014, accusing them of “leading an organisation”, “being a member of an organisation” and “making propaganda for an organisation”. In such cases “organisation” refers to the PKK. The case had been allowed to languish, but he had been called to a hearing on 23 May, and the next hearing was already scheduled for the 5 June. Pro-government media tried to claim, without evidence, that Akış was running away from this. His lawyer was also told that there was a new investigation against him, but was refused any details.
In response to the question of why the party would choose a candidate with a court case hanging over them, Sebahat Tuncel, herself recently released from prison, explained, “Is there any Kurd in Turkey who is a democrat and hasn’t had a lawsuit filed against them?” Even if they had tried to find candidates without lawsuits, this would have acted as an invitation for those candidates to be charged. As Abdullah Zeydan, the co-mayor of Van, has pointed out, “If there really was a ‘crime’, would a file be kept waiting for 10 years? Further, if there had been real concerns about criminality, then the election authorities should not have accepted Akış as a candidate.
T24 has revealed that the prosecutor who prepared the crucial 2014 indictment was one of the Gülenist prosecutors and judges who had a case filed against them after the 2016 coup attempt. The coup was attributed to the Gülenist organisation, which had been Erdoğan’s close allies in breaking down Kemalist state structures, but which Erdoğan had turned against when they became too powerful. The Gülenist prosecutors and judges were themselves accused of being members of a terrorist organisation and of many illegal practices, and the original prosecutor for Akış’ case is on the government’s “wanted for terrorism” list. Other cases put together by these prosecutors were dismissed as conspiracies, but not those involving purported membership of the PKK.
The day before Akış’s crucial hearing and sentencing, journalist Sinan Aygül had revealed on Twitter that the evidence against him rested on a secret witness who had confessed to Aygül many years ago that he had been blackmailed to say what the police wanted. Aygül had interviewed the man, known as “Oyun Bozan”, or “killjoy”, by letter when both were in prison in 2012. “Oyun Bozan” had explained that over a period of four years he had been pressured into signing false witness statements for this and a great many other cases. When the interview had been published, the false statements were quietly removed from the files, but now they were at the centre of the case against Akış.
A history of mayoral detentions
Shocking as all this is, it can hardly have come as a surprise. 97 of the 102 HDP mayors elected in 2014 were replaced in a similar fashion – the HDP was the predecessor of the DEM Party – and before the 2019 local elections, Erdoğan warned that new HDP mayors would be removed again. That time, 65 HDP mayors were elected. Some were prevented from taking up their posts on the grounds that they had previously been dismissed – even though their candidacies had been officially approved – and were replaced by the defeated runner-up from the AKP. This was the scenario that the government attempted to repeat in Van following this year’s elections, until they were forced to step back in the face of concerted opposition. Forty-eight of the HDP mayors elected in 2019 – most of the rest – were removed with accusations under the terrorism laws and replaced by government appointed trustees, as has now happened again in Hakkâri. Many mayors were imprisoned or had to go into exile.
The removal of HDP mayors and their replacement by state-appointed trustees was made possible by a presidential decree brought in during the Emergency declared following the 2016 attempted coup. This decree is unconstitutional, but has not been repealed. According to the Turkish constitution, a mayor can only be removed if found guilty of an offence related to their position as mayor. The decree allows the Interior Minister to remove or suspend a mayor on the basis of an accusation of illegal behaviour alone. This could be a single complaint. The constitution also requires a replacement mayor to be elected by and from the council. Under the decree, mayors are replaced by the regional governor, who is an appointee of the Interior Minister, and the elected council also stops functioning, so that the governor has complete control with no checks and balances. This system has only been implemented in HDP (and now DEM Party) municipalities.
As well as closing down institutions built up under the HDP, Governors have used municipal budgets to create personal patronage networks and support their party. The extent of this raid on public resources was revealed after the last elections where, in many cases, municipalities were found to have been left with very substantial debts. One of the first things that the incoming DEM Party mayors did was remove the barriers built by the trustees to keep local people out of their public offices.
Ali Çelik, the Govenor of Hakkâri who has taken over control of the municipality, had also been in control before the election. The previous elected HDP mayor had been removed and replaced by the Governor in October 2019, and Çelik, who was close to former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, had taken over control when he was appointed Governor last August. The newly elected co-mayors had revealed that Çelik had left the municipality with a debt of 315 million Turkish Lira – nearly 10 million dollars – and had spent 30 million TL of municipal funds supporting the AKP mayoral candidate. He had recruited public officials through the pro-government HAK-BEL union, and had awarded municipal tenders to AKP friendly companies.
In a defiant speech to his Party’s group meeting after this latest government takeover in Hakkâri, the DEM Party’s other co-chair, Tuncer Bakırhan, observed that, to avoid hypocrisy, the AKP government’s new constitution should have as its first two articles: “Kurds are a colonial people in Turkey. It is governed by colonial methods. [And] Kurdish people do not have the right to vote and be elected. They have no right to govern the cities they live in.”
Resistance
Some may question why, with this history, the DEM Party stood in the elections anyway: after all, isn’t doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results supposed to be a definition of insanity? The answer to this question has two parts. First, the situation is never the same because the political milieu is always different and these actions can help to change it. Second, electoral politics is only part of the party’s activity and contributes to the bigger struggle. The DEM Party is deeply enmeshed with other forms of community organisation, which gain prominence through electoral activity and have built strong grassroots support. By taking part in elections, and managing to bring in some changes during the brief periods preceding government intervention, the DEM Party, and the HDP before it, demonstrate what they are campaigning for and how it is the state that is preventing them from achieving the changes people want, so building the momentum for mass transformative action.
We saw the strength of mass action in April, when the government was forced to backtrack on their decision to disqualify the elected mayor of Van. Now, despite government bans and huge police and army presence, the DEM Party and their supporters are out on the streets again, protesting what has happened, protecting other DEM Party municipalities with vigils, and emphasising that what is happening to Kurds now, could happen to other opposition groups in the future.
Actions have not been restricted to the Kurdish region. There have been protests in Ankara and Istanbul, and also in other cities. A protest by DEM Party MPs in the parliament was attacked by MPs from the AKP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), much to the delight of armchair pundits who always enjoy brawling politicians. The council in one small municipality has decided to leave the DEM Party and try their luck as independents, but, generally, solidarity with the party is strong and the resistance tenacious. Hakkâri’s elected councillors have promised to continue working for the people, even though they are shut out of the municipal building and deprived of municipal resources.
The CHP
The government’s actions have met strong criticism from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and from other opposition parties. CHP leader, Özgür Özel, wrote on Twitter on Monday, “The trustee appointment should be withdrawn. We are on the side of democracy and the will of the people, and against the trustee mentality!” On Tuesday, a CHP delegation was despatched to Hakkâri. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul who is expected to be the CHP’s next presidential candidate, said that he had been against “the weirdness called trustees” from the beginning, and that the process “breaks people’s faith in democracy”.
Criticism from the left parties, such as the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP), came as expected, but there has also been criticism from others, such as former prime minister and AKP leader, Ahmet Davutoğlu, now chair of the Future Party.
Reaction from abroad
While the outcry within Turkey has been impressive and significant, internationally, reaction has been disappointingly muted, especially compared to the reaction to the attempted takeover of Van. Hakkâri is a much smaller place, of course, but if protests are not big enough, this attack on democracy will not stop there.
There has been condemnation from individual parliamentarians, as well as from the Party of European Socialists, which brings together European social democratic parties and from Germany’s Commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance. The European Union’s Rapporteur on Turkey, Nacho Sánchez Amor, tweeted, “Blatant attack to democratic principles & total disregard to people’s will: fastest way for Turkish Gov to demolish any hope of accession revival”. But where is the response from Europe’s guardians of democracy in the Council of Europe – or from the champions of democracy across the Atlantic? Instead, we read “U.S. proud to announce today a major step forward in Türkiye’s purchase of new F-16 Block 70 fighter jets – the most advanced F-16 ever made, available only to closest Allies and partners. Just the latest example of U.S. enduring commitment to security partnership with Türkiye.”
The Role of The Media
Authoritarian states need the pseudo legitimacy of rigged elections and political trials, which can be spun by a heavily controlled media. Externally, too, this pretence at democratic and legal process makes it easier for other countries to turn a blind eye to what is happening if it doesn’t suit their own agenda. And supposedly neutral international media makes this easy.
Reuters began their report by stating that a pro-Kurdish mayor was “detained over alleged militant links”, and ended with the usual mantra about the PKK, which has been carefully cultivated by Turkey to shut down all criticism of their treatment of the Kurds: “Turkish authorities accuse DEM and its pro-Kurdish predecessors of ties to the PKK, which is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Over 40,000 people have been killed in the PKK’s separatist insurgency against the Turkish state, launched in 1984.” A similar statement ended their two subsequent articles. They did mention that the DEM Party “has previously denied any association with the PKK”, but not that Turkey routinely uses accusations of terrorism to shut down the opposition, as has been widely acknowledged and criticised. With respect to the PKK itself, they also fail to acknowledge that the vast majority of the over 40,000 killed were Kurds killed by the Turkish state. They should also note that the PKK is not now looking for a separate state and has long been seeking negotiations on democracy and civil rights within Turkey; and they might even observe that the terrorist designations were made at the behest of Turkey, which is considered an important NATO ally. Conveniently, “Akis and his lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment”.
Generally, though, the foreign press has simply ignored this inconvenient truth altogether. There has been mainstream coverage here in France, but Google searches reveal almost nothing in the United States or the UK. The Washington Post reproduced a short piece by the Associated Press on the protest in parliament, with an image of the ensuing ‘scuffle’; the BBC has some articles in Turkish; the most recent article on Hakkâri in the Guardian was about the discovery of two new species of mole.
More Positive Developments
The Turkish government’s pretence at legality and democracy is a complicated game, which can still turn up positive events as well as negative ones. Last Sunday, the DEM Party in Hilvan made good their promise to win the municipality’s rerun election with a large margin. Hilvan (Curnê Reş) is a district of Urfa (Riha) with a population of around 42,000. The DEM Party’s original win had been annulled by the election authorities due to voting irregularities, even though these were widely acknowledged to have been deliberately carried out by supporters of the losing AKP candidate to force a rerun – a group including the candidate’s nephew was filmed burning the contents of two ballot boxes. The DEM Party candidate won the rerun with a margin of over 3,000 votes, and the twice-elected new co-mayors received their election certificates on Wednesday.
This week has also seen rulings from Turkey’s Constitutional Court that the decree giving the president the power to appoint university rectors and change central bank governors, and the decree allowing him to appoint deputy and district governors are unconstitutional. President Erdoğan considers himself above the law and has shown little respect for the Constitutional Court, but as his dominance fades, these rulings could come back to haunt him.
What Next?
Returning to the replacement of DEM Party mayors, there are fears that the co-mayor of Tatvan, in Bitlis, is being lined up for dismissal. Mümin Erol, has been investigated for removing Erdoğan’s photograph from his office, although, as Erol himself points out, there is no law requiring the photograph be displayed. No action has been taken against CHP and MHP mayors who similarly removed Erdoğan’s photograph.
Erdoğan, of course, portrays the dismissal and imprisonment of an elected mayor as simply a necessary legal process. He knows that by blocking all political routes to Kurdish emancipation he may drive some young Kurds to join the guerrillas in the mountains, but he is more confident of beating the Kurds with overwhelming military force than at the ballot box. Not that his war has yet brought him the victory that he is looking for.
No elections for North and East Syria
I have said so much about Hakkâri that there are few words left me, but I want to bring the story up to date on North and East Syria, where the Autonomous Administration has postponed the long-discussed elections for a second time. They were originally planned for 30 May and then put off until 11 June to allow more time for organisation. Now the Administration is talking about delaying at least until August.
The official reason is the request for more time to campaign by some of the competing parties. However, the election announcement had not only produced an extremely hostile response from Turkey, with Erdoğan threatening to ensure the election could not happen; it had also been rejected by the United States, who clearly did not want to thwart the wishes of their Turkish ally. Amberin Zaman observes in al Monitor, “the prevailing consensus is that the Biden administration’s opposition, aired publicly and in private, was the main driver of the postponement”. The Autonomous Administration still relies on the presence of American troops to prevent a full-scale Turkish invasion, but the US will do nothing to allow the Administration to develop real stability or prevent Turkey ‘s war of attrition. Going ahead with the election under these circumstances was simply too risky. Saleh Muslim, co-chair of the dominant Democratic Union Party (PYD), told al-Monitor “So many preparations were made, campaigning started. If you introduce such a long pause, momentum will be lost… [The United States] encourage us to pursue the path of democracy and then tell us it’s not a good time to hold elections”. The hypocrisy of Western talk about democracy has been thoroughly exposed this week.
Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter