The members of parliament from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) went to see the former mayors of Mardin and Diyarbakir to express solidarity with them and their pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
“We visited Ahmed Turk [dismissed] mayor of Mardin in order to show our opposition to the anti-democratic and illegal coup against the elected mayor,” tweeted Ilhan Cihaner, one of the CHP lawmakers.
Cihaner, who was joined by fellow CHP lawmaker Ali Seker, shared the video of the visit with the tweet.
On August 19, The Turkish Ministry of the Interior announced that they sacked Turk along with the mayors of Diyarbakir and Van for allegedly using their positions to help the Kurdistan Workers’ Party - a militant group considered terrorists by Ankara that fights for greater political and cultural rights for Turkey’s Kurds.
The HDP mayors were elected in the latest local election on March 31. In that election, Diyarbakir Mayor Adnan Mizrakli received 63 percent of the vote, Mardin Mayor Ahmet Turk received 56 percent, and Van Mayor Bedia Ozgokce received 54 percent.
Cihaner and Seker also visited Mizrakli on Sunday.
The ministry’s decision was welcomed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). However, it received widespread criticism from inside and outside the country, including Human Rights Watch and the European Union.
CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and some other officials of the party condemned the move.
“What has been done is incompatible with democracy. The move was conducted in the spirit of a coup against the will of people,” Kilicdaroglu told Sozcu newspaper on Tuesday.
“This subject is not related to the HDP or any other party … as what has been done was disrespect to the will of people."
Relations between the HDP and CHP improved in early 2019 after the former threw support for the latter’s mayoral candidate in the Istanbul election, Ekrem Imamoglu, against the AKP’s candidate. Imamoglu won, in part due to Kurdish voters.
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