Tuncer Bakırhan, the co-chair of the Kurdish-led Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), has said that the people demanding peace, justice and freedom have emerged as the winners of the recent local elections.
Visiting Turkey’s Kurdish-majority city of Siirt (Sert) on Thursday, Bakırhan addressed a large group of supporters at a gathering.
He stressed that the vote of the people in Siirt demonstrated that they did not favour the candidates of the ruling party, who for many years, “plundered the local government’s sources, stole and disregarded the people’s mother tongue and culture”.
“Those who defied the Kurdish people access to their own local governments have lost. It is you, those who demand peace, justice and freedom, who have won,” he added.
The DEM Party co-chair pledged that the elected representatives will take all measures to safeguard the city’s wealth.
Bakırhan was accompanied on his visit by Siirt deputy Sabahat Sarıtaş and the recently elected co-mayor Sofya Alağaş.
The former co-mayor Berivan Helen Işık, who won in the previous local elections in 2019, was removed from the post and replaced with a state appointed official by the Turkish interior ministry in 2020. Işık was held under house arrest for more than 15 months while she was not informed about what she was accused for.
The DEM Party received 50 percent of the votes in the recent local election on 31 March against the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) 37 percent.
