People have taken to the streets in Turkey’s Hakkari (Colemêrg), Ankara and Istanbul over the arrest and imprisonment of the recently elected mayor of Hakkari, Mehmet Sıddık Akış.
Akış was arrested on 5 June and fast-tracked to trial within just 24 hours. Journalists have already uncovered that witness evidence in Akış’s trial was obtained under coercion, and that he may have been convicted on the basis of false testimony. He was sentenced to almost 20 years imprisonment for alleged ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’.
Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) Party members marched in Hakkari (Colemerg) on 6 June, alongside members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Hundreds of protesters chanted “Bijî berxwedana Colemêrgê” (“Long live the resistance of Hakkari”), in a gesture of encouragement to their comrades to remain on the streets despite mounting police and military repression.
The DEM Party has pledged continuous protests against the Turkish state’s anti-democratic move.
Since 2016, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has replaced the majority of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) elected mayors in southeast Turkey with state appointees. After the DEM Party’s gains in the March 2024 municipal elections, many were hopeful that the practice would end. But the replacement of Akış with a government-picked kayyim may be the start of a new purge of DEM Party mayors.
The DEM Party is the political successor to the progressive pro-Kurdish HDP. The party is inspired by the values of ecology, women’s freedom and radical democracy shared across the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
DBP Co-Chair Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar, who joined the protest in Hakkari, said, “The trusteeship is a historical thing. Kurds are being subjected to lawlessness. This law has spread not only in Kurdistan but all over Turkey as lawlessness, injustice and poverty. Beginning in 2016, the burden of the trustee appointments is now on the shoulders of the whole of Turkey.”
Meanwhile in Ankara, DEM Party MPs Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit and Sezai Temelli made a press statement outside the Turkish parliament, along with several other DEM Party representatives.
The politicians then marched to the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) carrying banners that read “Trusteeship is a coup” and “Municipalities are ours, we will not allow usurpation”. They held a meeting with ministry officials at the MoI.
According to Koçyiğit: “We have spoken a lot against the trustee regime. Elections were held on 31 March and the government itself emphasised a new era. They stated that they had received the messages of the voters. But they did not take any message from the voters. On the contrary, they have again and again launched an attack against society, against the people, against the will of the ballot box, against democracy.”
“It is meaningful that they started this attack attempt from Hakkari. Because the only way for this regime to survive is to attack the Kurds. It is based on rendering the ballot box meaningless and usurping the will that comes out of it. However, we know very well that the unlawfulness in Hakkari and the coup against the will of the people in Hakkari will not be limited to Hakkari, and that this coup will spread to the whole country step by step. Everyone, especially in all four corners of Turkey, must stand against this unlawfulness,” she said.
“If we defend democracy together, we can win together. The whole public understands the Ministry of Interior’s conspiracy” argued Koçyiğit.
The DEM Party MP said that the repression of the Turkish state “could not steal the will of the people of Hakkari.”
She emphasised that the people of Hakkari were right to resist, saying that the state has “surrounded the city with soldiers and police boots. From our 70-year-old mothers to our 7-year-old children, they are indiscriminately gassing and batoning them. We do not accept this fascism and violence.”
Koçyiğit pointed out that, in the Turkish city of Kepez, the elected mayor was dismissed, but a new mayor had been elected in parliament. This contrasts starkly to the situation in Hakkari, where a state approved mayor was appointed.
Koçyiğit called on the AKP government to “abide by the law and democratic practices”.
Similarly, in Istanbul, DEM Party representatives Kezban Konukçu and Celal Fırat, alongside Cengiz Çiçek of the Peoples’ Democratic Congress (HDK) hung a banner off the side of the iconic Bosphorus Bridge. The banner read “Get rid of the trustee”.
The HDK is an assembly of political parties and social movements aiming to democratise Turkey, using the model of democratic confederalism, proposed by imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party co-founder Abdullah Öcalan. Çiçek, who is the co-spokesperson of the HDK, said: “From Gezi to Kobanê, from Istanbul to Hakkari, the losers will be the coup plotters. The winner will be the peoples of Kurdistan and Turkey. We will win.”
Konukçu said that the people would not allow their will to be usurped. He said: “We do not accept this. From here we call on all democratic masses; we have to stand together against this trustee mentality. We have to come together to build a country where people can live together as equal brothers and sisters.”
Resistance is set to continue, with vigils and protests planned in several cities. The IHD Human Rights Association has announced a vigil at 2pm on June 7 at its Ankara Branch. They shared this slogan on social media platform X: “Respect the Will of the People for Social Peace”.
