Hundreds of residents of Syria’s Arab-majority Tebqa (al-Thawrah) organised a march to protest against the arrest of Hakkari (Colemêrg) co-Mayor Mehmet Sıddık Akış, the seizure of the municipality, and the appointment of a government ‘trustee’ to his position.
The protest, which took place at Martyrs’ Square outside the Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria (AANES)’s Tebqa offices, saw participants unfurl banners reading “No to the Turkish occupation” and “Long live the resistance of the Kurdish people”. Demonstrators also carried photographs of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and chanted the slogans “Long live the resistance of Colemêrg” and “Down with the occupying Turkish regime”, referring to Turkey’s occupation of parts of northern Syria, claiming it was under threat from Kurdish forces, after they had helped to defeat ISIS in the region.
Ebdulhemid el-Ebdoli, co-chair of the Union of Municipalities of Tebqa Canton, read out a statement on behalf of the union, expressing solidarity with the protestors, criticising Turkish government policies and the arrest and detention of politicians, intellectuals and MPs as anti-democratic.
The statement condemned the Turkish state’s policy of denial of the Kurdish identity and its violations against democratic movements, supported the resistance against the Turkish government’s actions, emphasising that resistance is essential to achieving justice and democracy and bringing an end to denial.
The appointment of the trustee in Hakkari follows a pattern observed in several Kurdish-majority municipalities in Turkey, where elected mayors have been replaced by government appointees. This move, often justified by the government on grounds of alleged links to terrorism, has been widely criticised by opposition parties and human rights groups as undermining local democracy.
The protests in Hakkari are part of a broader wave of demonstrations across the region, highlighting the Turkish state’s ongoing efforts to increase tensions. The Turkish government has yet to respond to the latest protests.
Tebqa, one of the last cities liberated from ISIS occupation by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), stands out as a city with a high Arab population under the control of the AANES. A significant part of the Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian, Ismaili and Shiite minority groups left the city after the civil war. After the city came under AANES control, the administration reported that some of the minority groups returned and joined them alongside the city’s Arab majority.
