Turkish court sentences pro-Kurdish mayor to prison time

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced the pro-Kurdish mayor of Dersim (Tunceli) to over six years in prison on charges of belonging to a “terrorist organization.” The mayor claims this is part of preparations to appoint a trustee in the Kurdish city.

A Dersim court on Wednesday sentenced the city’s co-mayor, Cevdet Konak, to six years and three months in prison. Konak was elected in March as the candidate of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).

“We have been in office for seven months, and within these seven months, they accused us of membership in an organization and requested a sentence of six years and three months. They handed down the sentence,” Konak told journalists following the court decision.

“Friends, we will raise our democratic struggle even further. Our lawyer friends have stated that this decision is unlawful. We will exercise our democratic rights,” he added.

According to Konak, the case was filed against them in 2022 on events allegedly dating back to 2013.

Alongside Konak, Mustafa Sarigul, the mayor of Dersim’s Ovacik district from the opposition’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) was also sentenced to prison.

Following Wednesday’s decision, Konak and his co-Mayor Birsen Orhan along with party allies in the province decided to hold a vigil inside the municipality building.

“It seems that the next process is preparation for the trustee. We all clearly see that this decision is a political coup,” Orhan said in a video message on X, recorded inside the municipality building.

The Turkish government has recently turned up the heat on the DEM Party and its elected mayors. In June, a court sentenced the party’s mayor in Hakkari (Colemerg), Mehmet Siddik Akis, to 19.5 years in prison for alleged affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Akis was removed from his position days before the court ruling and was replaced by a state-appointed trustee.

Earlier this month, the Turkish interior ministry removed three Kurdish mayors - Ahmet Turk of Mardin, Gulistan Sonuk of Batman, and Mehmet Karayilan of the Halfeti district in Sanliurfa province - and replaced them with government-appointed trustees. 

The removal of Kurdish mayors and their replacement with trustees is not new. Dozens of Kurdish mayors affiliated with other pro-Kurdish parties have been dismissed and replaced with trustees following terror-related accusations since 2016. Many of them have been sentenced to jail. The DEM Party denies any links to the PKK and maintains it is merely pro-Kurdish.

Kurdish mayor Ahmet Ozer of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district was arrested in late October because of alleged PKK links and was quickly replaced with a trustee. 

Thousands of Kurdish politicians and supporters of pro-Kurdish parties, mainly DEM Party’s predecessor the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), have been jailed in the past decade for PKK-linked charges. A large number of them remain behind bars. 

DEM Party scored several significant victories in the March elections. It took Diyarbakir, Mardin, Batman, Siirt, Hakkari, Van, and Igdir provinces, which its sister party, the HDP, won in 2019 only to have their mayors removed because of alleged links with Kurdish rebels and replaced by state-appointed administrators.