Fréderike Geerdink
It was a beautiful sight how the newly elected mayors in several Kurdish towns broke down the barriers around the municipality buildings that the AKP had erected while they were illegally ruling. A new spring in Kurdistan? Literally, yes, and I’d love to be there to see nature burst open, but politically? We better buckle up.
On social media, I saw the footage of two municipalities that fully opened again for the public, both in Urfa province. The first was in Viranşehir, where the X-ray system was removed and the green-wired fence con-struction on the low wall around the municipality building was dismantled. The other was in Suruç, the town across the border from where people supported and reported on the Kurdish battle against ISIS in Kobani back in 2014: there, the huge concrete blocks that barricaded the municipality from the outside world were dismantled. I spent a lot of time in Suruç in 2015, even crossing the border into Kobani right after the YPG and YPJ kicked ISIS out to report for the Independent, so this return to normal made me especially happy.
Suspicion
If you’ve never been to Kurdistan or visited municipalities there, it may be hard to conceive but there is a huge difference between whether a municipality is run by AKP or the Kurdish party, now DEM but in the past their predecessors HDP or BDP. When the city or town is in Kurdish hands, the doors are always open, and the public feels free to walk in any time to arrange something or to get in touch with the people working for their local administration. When AKP is in charge, you are met with suspicion, hence the X-ray systems and the much more formal atmosphere.
These differences are of course exemplary of the proximity of the administrators to the population they serve. You even feel that when you pass the municipality on foot, I remember from my time in Amed (Diyar-bakır). The historical Sur neighbourhood was very open when Abdullah Demirbaş was the mayor. Once he was gone and AKP took over, fences were placed around the building and police were always guarding them. From then on, I would cross the street if walked past there, just feeling uncomfortable and unsafe.
Keys
There was more reason to have hope this week. DEM Party convincingly won the local elections in the southeast of the country. The story of the week was of course that elected co-mayor Abdullah Zeydan was denied his certificate and the AKP candidate was declared the election winner even though he only managed to get 27% of the vote, against 55% for Zeydan. After impressive protests, the district’s election board changed its mind and Zeydan received the keys to the municipality.
But is this the spring we’ve been longing for? I hate to temper your enthusiasm, but no, I don’t think this is the spring we have been waiting for. Zeydan initially didn’t get his certificate because the Ministry of Justice had ordered on the Friday before the elections that his approval to run as a candidate had to be withdrawn, and that just didn’t make formal sense. They want to ban the Kurdish mayors from serving their people, but they want to do it according to the laws they made up.
So, my prediction is – and I hardly do predictions but this one, I’m confident enough to write down – that AKP will make up some new accusations against the Kurdish mayors and start procedures against them. The whole charade with Zeydan is indicative, but also what unfolded on election day: the tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of soldiers who were transported to Kurdistan to vote in towns where they had been reg-istered just days before, shifting the vote in AKP’s favour. Şırnak is one example. The government is quite determined to keep Kurdistan under control, also from within the municipality buildings.
Name signs
But Erdoğan has weakened, right? CHP has become more powerful now and even though this is just on a local level, it will probably give AKP less room for suppression of Kurds, right? Because hasn’t Imamoğlu, who convincingly won Istanbul again, said that he is everybody’s mayor, and mentioned Kurds too? And didn’t CHP send a delegation to Van as well to advocate for Zeydan’s right to be officially installed as mayor?
True, true, but I don’t think that will help at all against what’s likely to come in Kurdistan. I would like to point to what happened in districts in the southern city of Adana, where CHP won most of the districts. The CHP mayors too ordered a change to the municipality buildings, just like the DEM Party mayors organised the removal of AKP’s barriers: they hung new name signs, adding T.C. to the municipality’s names. T.C. means Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, Republic of Turkey. This is used by old-fashioned Kemalists as a way to identify themselves and distinguish themselves from the ‘green’ (Islamic) Kemalism of the AKP.
Post-Erdoğan
This explains the larger picture. AKP and CHP may be battling each other fiercely and accept each other’s wins, but that is all within the structures of the state they built and defend. The state that by design denies Kurds their rights. Neither AKP nor CHP are interested in re-building Turkey into a land where everybody’s identity is respected, where people can live who they are in full freedom. I don’t make predictions about a post-Erdoğan era, in which maybe, just maybe Imamoğlu will win the presidential elections in 2028, but I do know this: the Kurdish struggle will have to continue, also if my prediction is wrong and the AKP lets the Kurdish mayors do their work until the next elections.
I trust the Kurdish movement to do that. This week’s victories may signify a new spring, they do offer a glimpse into the future, in which the movement will be successful.
*Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or sub-scribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
