Opposition parties in Turkey staged a protest outside the Interior Ministry against the government’s appointment of trustees to replace elected mayors. Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party’s Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit said the move undermined democracy, while Republican People’s Party (CHP) and New Path (Yeni Yol) Party leaders condemned it as unconstitutional. Labour Party (EMEP) MP Sevda Karaca called for broader resistance. Tensions rose when police tried to prevent the demonstrators from laying a black wreath at the entrance, but the group eventually managed to do so amid chants of solidarity.
Speaking on behalf of the DEM Party, deputy leader Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit criticised the government’s reliance on a post-coup emergency decree to justify the removals. “These appointments violate constitutional rights and deprive citizens of their most basic democratic freedoms,” she said. “A trustee has been imposed not only on Siirt, but effectively on the whole of Turkey. It is our collective duty to resist this attack on democracy.”
In 2024, the Turkish government intensified its practice of replacing elected mayors with state-appointed trustees, particularly targeting pro-Kurdish and the main opposition CHP municipalities. Infographic: Mayors replaced by state-appointed trustees in Turkey (2024-2025)Note: This table reflects publicly reported cases of mayoral dismissals and subsequent trustee appointments from June 2024 to January 2025.
CHP deputy leader Murat Emir echoed these sentiments, describing the move as an affront to the sanctity of every single vote. “Votes cast in Ovacık or Esenyurt carry the same weight as those cast in any other district,” he said. “We will not give in to any attempt to ignore the people’s decision. Hiding behind questionable legal pretexts cannot hide the erosion of democracy.”
Halkımızla beraber irade gaspına karşı Siirt Belediyemizin önündeyiz https://t.co/PeMzD9XOE2
— DEM Parti (@DEMGenelMerkezi) January 31, 2025
Bülent Kaya, leader of Yeni Yol, highlighted the lack of a final court ruling against Siirt co-mayor Sofya Alağaş, stressing that she had been in office for more than a year without incident. “A mere first-instance verdict is not the same as a final verdict,” Kaya said. “If Beşiktaş can still elect its own representatives, why does Esenyurt have to submit to the intervention of the central government? This blatant double standard needs to be addressed.”
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Sevda Karaca, an EMEP deputy, stressed that citizens across Turkey are uniting in their discontent with what they see as an increasingly authoritarian regime. “If the government wants to silence any dissenting voice, it is up to us to amplify our collective outcry,” Karaca said. “People are coming together over the smallest of common concerns to say, ‘Enough is enough.'”
Despite police efforts to prevent the installation of the black wreath, the politicians and their supporters persisted, chanting “No liberation alone – either all of us or none of us”. The protest ended with calls for wider solidarity among opposition groups to defend democratic rights across the country.
