The co-mayors of Patnos (Panos in Kurdish), Muserref Gecer and Emrah Kilic, in the southeast province of Agri, and a number of other municipal employees “were unlawfully detained this morning,” HDP said.
“These detentions are a continuation of the political genocide operations,” the party added.
The HDP won the municipality in the 2019 local elections. The party applies a co-leadership system within its internal structure and offices it governs, meaning that every position is jointly held by male and female counterparts.
Most of the HDP’s mayors have been removed from their positions for alleged links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey and named a terror organisation by Ankara. The ousted mayors were replaced with state-linked trustees.
The HDP said that none of the officials detained on Friday have yet made statements to the authorities.
The party vowed that “our people will defend their will until the end” against underhanded operations that aim to “usurp the will of the Kurdish people.”
Mezopotamya news agency, which is close to the HDP, reported that in addition to the co-mayors, the head of the municipality’s human resources was also detained.
The raids came weeks after Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections. The HDP lost seats in the vote and pundits have warned that its support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, could make it a target for more arrests.
In the past, Erdogan’s governments intensified crackdowns on the HDP whenever the party won at the ballot box. The HDP is the main rival of Erdogan’s party in Kurdish areas of the country. The arrests of HDP mayors in 2019 was seen as a reprisal for HDP’s support for the main opposition party in Istanbul and Ankara.
