Turkey imposes travel ban on pro-Kurdish mayors without court order: DEM Party official

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s interior ministry has slapped several mayors of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) with travel bans, a party official announced, stating that the bans were issued without a court order.

“In order to prevent the co-mayors … from going abroad to seek resources, establish international relations, and build bridges of brotherhood between municipalities, a travel ban has already been imposed on many of our co-mayors,” said Mehmet Rustu Tiryaki, DEM Party co-chair responsible for local administrations said in a statement read at the Turkish parliament on Monday.

Tiryaki noted that the bans were issued by the Turkish interior ministry without a prior court order.

“This is not even a court decision. No court has issued a travel ban on any of our co-mayors. The interior ministry, with a completely arbitrary decision, has prohibited our co-mayors from travelling abroad,” he said.

Pro-Kurdish media outlet Mezopotamya Agency (MA) reported following Tiryaki’s statement that the Turkish interior ministry issued a travel ban on nine mayors of city and district municipalities in the Diyarbakir (Amed), Mardin and Mersin provinces.

Diyarbakir Co-Mayor Serra Bucak is among those who were slapped with a travel ban.

The Turkish interior ministry has yet to announce the decisions or release a statement.

The Turkish government has recently turned the heat up against the DEM Party and its elected mayors. Earlier this month, a Turkish 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.

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 for terror-related charges since 2016, with many of them being sentenced to jail. The DEM Party denies any links to the group and maintains it is merely pro-Kurdish.

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

Last month, a Turkish court concluded a 10-year-old case against dozens of Kurdish politicians for their alleged involvement in deadly protests in 2014, including Selahattin Demirtas, former co-chair of the HDP, who has been in jail since 2016. Demirtas was handed 42 years in prison in what is known as the Kobani case, named after a Kurdish city in northern Syria (Rojava) that came under Islamic State (ISIS) attack in 2014. The demonstrations were in solidarity with Kobani.