Reports of state violence cast a shadow on Sunday’s elections in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority eastern provinces, with citizens reporting gunfire, tear gas and police mistreatment in Mardin (Mêrdîn) and Şırnak (Şirnex), where the opposition’s joint presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu won his second-highest percentage of the vote.
Mardin’s Kızıltepe (Qoser) and Şırnak’s Cizre (Cizîr) and Silopi (Silopya) districts were where reports were focused. In the neighbouring Şanlıurfa (Riha) province, four people were caught on camera kidnapping an unidentified victim using a Renault Taurus, a vehicle symbolic for its use in extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances during the height of the Kurdish conflict in the 1990s.
Around midnight opposition MP Murat Bakan said there were intense gunfire and pro-government tribesmen with guns patrolling the streets, with the gendarmerie or other security forces remaining in their barracks instead of intervening. Bakan also said the local gendarmerie commander had been openly supporting the ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidate Aslan Tatar and that his lack of intervention in the incidents was meant to enable a win for Tatar.
Earlier in April Bakan announced that the Interior Ministry had ordered the gendarmerie to remain at the ready on election day, going against normal procedure to have soldiers take the day off.
Journalist Sait Sırdaş shared footage of police abusing citizens on the street in Kızıltepe, where two people were beaten and arrested by the police for an unknown reason, and their neighbours who intervened were also beaten.
Another video Sırdaş shared shows plainclothes persons in Şanlıurfa forcing a civilian into a Renault Taurus. One of the abductors is seen clearly in the front seat, holding a stick.
