Ayvaz Hazir, mayor of Bahcesaray (known to Kurds as Miks) in Van province, was removed from his post after a court sentenced him to over three years in jail for membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Hazir, who won the position during the March local elections on the ticket of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), was replaced by a state-linked trustee.
The DEM Party protested the move and called on people to “use their right to democratic protest and protect against the trustee coup that usurped our will in an unjust and unlawful manner!”
Hazir is the eighth mayor to be ousted since March - all of Kurdish origin and from the DEM Party or the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The leaders of the DEM Party and the CHP met in Ankara on Friday to discuss the clampdown.
“Previously, trustees were only appointed to DEM Party municipalities, but now they are also being appointed to CHP municipalities. If things continue like this, it will become something that is not limited to local governments,” Tuncer Bakirhan, DEM Party co-chair, said in a joint press conference with CHP leader Ozgur Ozel.
Last Friday, the interior ministry announced that two mayors from Tunceli province (known to Kurds as Dersim) - Cevdet Konak, mayor of Tunceli city, and Mustafa Sarigul, district mayor of Ovacik (Pulur) - were removed from their positions and replaced with state-appointed trustees.
Konak, a member of the DEM Party, and Sarigul, from the CHP, were both sentenced to six years and three months in prison by a court on Wednesday for alleged links with the PKK.
International human rights monitors have slammed Turkey for removing the mayors.
"Denying hundreds of thousands of voters their chosen local government elected representatives and replacing them with the government’s own appointees not only undermines the democratic process, but violates the right to free and fair elections,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said earlier this month.
He said that successive governments of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "have adopted this method before, abusing their powers and smearing mayors with the charge of terrorism.”
Marc Cools, president of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, on November 4 expressed his "grave concern" over the removal of four mayors.
