Law, peace, and democracy in Turkey is our aim says pro-Kurdish MP

Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) struggle is one of restoring law, peace, and democracy in the country, one of the party’s lawmakers asserted during a protest, the T24 news portal reported on Sunday.

Hasan Ozgunes, an HDP lawmaker for Sirnak province, spoke during a sit-in protest in the southeastern Van province that was staged against the recent replacement of three HDP mayors with state-appointed officials over suspicion of terrorist activities.  

Early on August 19, Turkey’s Interior Ministry announced the dismissals of Diyarbakir mayor Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli, Mardin mayor Ahmet Turk and Van mayor Bedia Ozgokce Ertan due to their alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The Turkish state labels PKK, an armed militant group that has launched an insurgency for the Kurdish self-rule in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast in the 1980s, as a terrorist organization.

The protests held by the HDP officials and the party’s supporters continued in Van with a sit-in and Ozgunes’ press statement on the 29th day of the Kurdish mayors’ dismissal from office.

The demonstrators carried a placard that read: “[What we want is] people’s will, not the administration of trustees [state-appointed officials].”

“Our struggle is not for saving one or two mayoral offices [for HDP], but for restoring law, peace, and democracy in Turkey,” Ozgunes said, delivering his media statement.

He said only peace and freedoms can save the country.

Ozgunes added: “The trustees appointed to Amed [Diyarbakir], Mardin and Van have nothing to do with the Constitution, conscience, law or human rights. This is an official coup. We deem it a coup against Turkey’s peoples, democracy and law.”

Referring to the cities ruled by mayors from the main opposition secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), the pro-Kurdish MP argued, “If they can do this to us now, they can also do the same thing [to those mayors] in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, or any other municipality, later.”

He vowed: “We will be determined [in our demand] until the trustees are sent away. Our struggle will continue until [the mayors who are elected by] the will of the people are replaced. Success will be of those who desire democracy, law and social peace for Turkey. We are the soldiers for this cause.”

After the statement, the protesters concluded the event by chanting slogans with nobody being detained by police officers, despite a quarrel between the police and the lawmakers about the detention of a few protesters.

Another demonstration was on Sunday held in Diyarbakir, where HDP members staged a sit-in and then made a statement to the press.

Protesters, including HDP MPs Musa Farisiogulları, Semra Guzel, Saliha Aydeniz, and Mahmut Togrul and the city’s ousted mayor Mizrakli, held a placard that said: “Do not touch my will!”

“According to the [AK Party] AKP government, either we should be from AKP or we should not exist. The Middle East is geography that includes different communities, beliefs, and cultures. An attempt at destroying those differences can only be defined as a genocide policy” the statement highlighted.

The three dismissed Kurdish mayors came to the office following the March 31 local government elections when the ruling AKP government lost the mayoral race in Turkey’s several largest cities to the country’s secularist main opposition CHP.

According to a report by the Washington Post, the AKP government may have had ulterior motives for acting against the HDP mayors, some of whom had vowed to disclose the financial dealings of the governing-party members who had previously held the posts.

Diyarbakir’s mayor Mizrakli was one of those who had made such a promise.

A total of 90 mayors from the pro-Kurdish HDP, including Mardin’s Turk, were removed from their posts following an attempted coup that targeted the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP on July 15, 2016, also due to suspected terror-related charges.

The removals took place during the state of emergency that was declared by Erdogan less than a week after the failed coup and lasted for two years, during which the authorities enacted dozens of decrees that had the full force of the law.

Through those state of emergency decrees, also known as KHKs, thousands of academics, politicians, teachers, doctors, officials, businessmen, artists and journalists were purged due to their alleged connection with the coup.

According to a report by the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya Agency (MA) on Sunday, the dismissals of government officers by way of decrees is labeled as a “civilian death” by a group of protesters who gathered in Istanbul.

“Those who were purged were not just dismissed from their public sector jobs but they also lost their right to work, travel or express their ideas freely. The state of the emergency commission also has not carried out a fair research,” Emine Yuzgec, who represented the protesters, said.

The commission, which consists of 250 officials, was formed by the government so as to look into complaints from individuals who were adversely affected by government decrees.

Having received more than 125,000 applications so far, the commission has delivered decisions for 84,300 of them, accepting 6,700 and rejecting 77,600 since the start of its decision-making process on December 22, 2017.

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from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/09/16/law-peace-and-democracy-in-turkey-is-our-aim-says-pro-kurdish-mp/