ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Cizre Mayor Leyla Imret, a Kurd, has been suspended by Turkey’s interior ministry in the wake of the city becoming a focal point of renewed conflict between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported Saturday the interior ministry suspended Imret on Friday on accusations she had encouraged her fellow Kurds to begin an armed uprising and “terror propaganda,” after Turkey announced a curfew on Cizre begun on September 4 would end Saturday. Cizre is located in the heavily Kurdish Sirnak province in Turkey’s restive southeast.
Imret won a record 83 percent of votes in mayoral elections last March. At just 27, she was the youngest mayor in Turkey.
On Thursday, Turkey’s interior ministry said a pro-Kurdish delegation was banned from entering Cizre amid a deadly military operation against Kurdish “rebels” there. Critics have claimed Turkey in its latest crackdown on Cizre has committed human rights violations.
The banned delegation was led by the co-leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, and included two ministers from the party and dozens of lawmakers.
The interior ministry claimed that 800 kilograms of explosives had been recovered during the military operations in Cizre since the beginning of September, and that seven PKK members and a civilian were killed. Ten people were also arrested, the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Turkey and the PKK have been locked in a three-decade conflict in which some 40,000 people have been killed. The conflict re-ignited in late July after the PKK claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish policemen.
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