It’s “past time for the dictatorial practices of the fascist AKP-MHP regime to come to an end,” the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) has said, in a statement responding to the Turkish government’s attempt to prevent a democratically-elected Kurdish mayor from taking office, since overturned following widespread street protests.
In their message addressed to the UN, Council of Europe and EU, the representative Kurdish political organisation called on these institutions to “support the Kurdish people and the principles of democracy in Turkey against Erdogan’s authoritarianism.” Their message came after the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party achieved a significant victory in the local elections held in Turkey on March 31, 2024. Its electoral strategy, in which its voters supported candidates from the country’s largest opposition party CHP, prevented Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP-MHP alliance from winning the municipalities of major cities like Istanbul and Ankara.
The DEM Party itself won 81 municipalities in Kurdistan. The result in Van province stood out, as DEM Party candidates won the Van Metropolitan Municipality and all fourteen district municipalities, while the DEM candidate for Van Metropolitan Municipality, Abdullah Zeydan, won 55.5% of the vote. However, per the Justice Ministry’s order, the Van Provincial Election Board ruled on April 2 to hand the “certificate of election,” a document that signifies the elected candidate’s right to govern, to the second-place AKP candidate.
That decision prompted widespread protests in Van and throughout Kurdish regions of Turkey, and prompted the KNK’s warning that “this is a political attack on the right of voters in Van to choose their representatives and has nothing to do with law.”
Protesters were met with rubber bullets, water cannon, and reported torture targeting some of at least 89 detainees. “The Kurdish people and their allies are on the front lines of the global fight for democracy today,” the KNK warned in their statement. “The international community must not let them do so alone. Standing together with the DEM Party against this coup can help move Turkey towards democracy and will signal to autocrats everywhere that stealing elections has consequences.”
In particular, the Brussels-based organisation issued a warning that Turkey was repeating anti-democratic measures familiar from the country’s 20th-century history of coups and repressive military regimes, pointing to “Frightening signs… that special paramilitary units are being deployed in Kurdistan to prevent the Kurds from standing up for their democracy and their fundamental civil rights.These units were responsible for thousands of assassinations and disappearances of Kurdish politicians, activists, and civil society leaders in Kurdistan in the 1980s and 1990s. Curfews and travel bans are being imposed to prevent information from coming out of the region.”
Following international condemnation, criticism including from CHP politicians, and continued protests in defiance of the law, the country’s electoral commission announced it was reversing the decision, paving the way for Zeydan to take office. It’s the first time the Turkish authorities have reversed such a decision, meaning that the electoral process will remain under scrutiny in the country, where 61 out of 65 democratically-elected pro-Kurdish mayors were previously removed from office on similar pretexts.
“Democratic societies must stand together with the DEM Party, Kurdish voters, and all defenders of democracy in Turkey and Kurdistan,” the KNK said when concluding their statement.
