The Turkish government aims to suppress the women’s liberation model and render women powerless by appointing trustees to municipalities run by elected pro-Kurdish co-mayors, said Gülistan Öncü, co-mayor of Savur Municipality in the Kurdish-majority province of Mardin (Mêrdîn) on Friday.
Öncü’s statements came during a protest in Diyarbakır (Amed) organised by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Democratic Local Governance Women’s Committee on the anniversary of the commencement of ongoing practice of dismissing Kurdish mayors from their positions and appointing trustees.
Öncü stated that the co-major model was introduced in partial response to the limited notion of women’s role in society as prompted by the current government in Turkey, and thus constitutes a threat to patriarchal conceptions of power in the country. She added: “It must be emphasised that the fact remains that no politics devoid of women’s agency can become a societal reality.”
Green Left Party (YSP) Co-Spokesperson Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar has accused the government of perpetuating the trustee system to control power. She asserted that the current administration seems determined to continue the trustee regime, which all branches of the state, including the security forces, rely upon. Uçar maintained that they stood resolute yesterday, stand firm today, and will remain unwavering tomorrow.
Uçar continued to highlight that the trustee practice extends beyond the Kurdish-majority cities. She argued that trustee appointments in municipalities could potentially serve as a means to establish an authoritarian regime, possibly expanding into western regions as well.
Waves of trustee appointments to Kurdish-majority municipalities
Following the collapse of short-lived peace talks aimed at ending the Kurdish conflict within Turkey between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish government, with the first wave of trustee appointments to Kurdish-majority municipalities in 2016, a total of 95 municipalities were placed under trustees. Along with these appointments, 93 co-mayors of the replaced municipalities were also arrested.
Interpreted as a reflection of public reaction to the trustee appointments, during the local elections on 31 March 2019, the pro-Kurdish HDP won the mayor’s office of a total of 65 municipalities.
Only 4 months after the elections, on 19 August 2019, a process began in which trustee appointments continued in waves and numerous Kurdish mayors were arrested.
The co-mayor system, which the Ministry of Interior listed among the reasons for trustee appointments, is a project achieved through the struggle of women. It was implemented for the first time in the world at the level of local administrations following the 30 March 2014 elections in conjunction with the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). With this implementation, thousands of women in municipalities gained representation, the right to a greater say and to exist in the public sphere through economic and social policies directed towards them.
