There is another step taken by the Turkish government, who has normalized arbitrary, unlawful and anti-democratic practices. Passing over the political will of the people of Diyarbakir, the AKP government arrested the city’s co-mayors Ms Gültan Kışanak and Mr Fırat Anlı, who had been democratically elected by the votes of hundreds of thousands of people, and then appointed a trustee to run Diyarbakir metropolitan municipality.
The AKP-Erdoğan regime’s political vision is to arrest the democratically elected and to make the appointed local administrators. We do not recognize the appointment of a trustee to run Diyarbakir metropolitan municipality both legally and politically. This trustee coup based on state of emergency rule and its decrees with the power of law is to seize and destroy people’s democratic will.
We emphasize once again that the appointment of trustees by the Turkish government to replace elected Kurdish mayors violates many articles of the Turkish Constitution, the international law, and human rights conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Charter of Local Self-Government, to which Turkey is a signatory party.
This unlawful practice, which has rendered local governors and institutions dysfunctional, is and should be void and null for anybody who believes in democracy and justice.
Peoples’ Democratic Party
Central Executive Board
1 November 2016