Protests forbidden for two weeks following clashes between police and locals over controversial dismissal of mayor-elect from pro-Kurdish party who won Sunday’s local elections by huge margin.
The Governorate Office in Van province in Eastern Turkey has banned all protests, gatherings and similar events following clashes between security forces and citizens who protested after the mayoralty was offered to the ruling party’s candidate despite the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, DEM Party candidate winning the mayoralty with a huge margin.
“Except for those deemed appropriate …demonstrations, marches, open-air meetings and indoor meetings, all kinds of press statements, sit-ins and surveys, setting up tents and stands, organising signature campaigns, distributing leaflets, brochures and flyers and all kinds of protest actions are banned,” the governor’s office said on Tuesday.
The governor also deployed a high number of police and gendarmerie officers in the city against possible protests and demonstrations.
On Tuesday, two days after local elections in Turkey, the Supreme Election Council, YSK, accepted a complaint submitted by the ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, that the elected mayor of eastern Van, DEM Party candidate Abdullah Zeydan, was ineligible to run. Zeydan was previously jailed on terrorism allegations but the YSK approved his candidacy before the elections.
As a result, the mayoralty was offered to Abdullah Arvas, candidate of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP who came 28 percentage points behind Zeydan in Sunday’s local elections. Police fired water cannon and teargas when protesters took to the streets to denounce the ruling and dozens of protesters were taken into police custody.
“We will not accept this political coup targeting the will of the people,” Abdullah Zeydan said in an interview on Tuesday.
Other political parties called on the government to reverse this decision.
“I expect them [the government] not to contaminate this new era with such a mistake and such a new black mark. And I warn him [Erdogan],” Ozgur Ozel, leader of main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, said on Tuesday, calling the YSK decision a “political ambush” of the will of the citizens of Van.
Turkey’s main opposition party on Monday claimed a huge victory in Sunday’s local elections, securing almost all the main cities and handing President Erdogan his biggest defeat in more than two decades.
With a new leader, Ozgur Ozel, elected after its 2023 electoral humiliation and backed by popular Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP took 37.8 per cent of the total vote, ahead of the AKP on 35.5 per cent.
The pro-Kurdish DEM Party won most cities in the east and southeastof Turkey where citizens of Kurdish descent are the majority.
After the 2019 local elections, Erdogan’s government dismissed most elected Kurdish mayors, citing alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK.
Following the latest election disaster, experts have warned that President Erdogan may choose to increase a crackdown on the opposition and critics.
