Turkey Refuses to Let Pro-Kurdish Mayor Take Office, Installs Member of Erdogan’s Party Instead

Turkish election officials on Tuesday refused to allow pro-Kurdish Mayor-Elect Abdullah Zeydan take office in the city of Van.

Instead, the national government tried to install a member of authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party as mayor, even though Zeydan defeated him by almost 30 points in the election. The decision was reversed by Turkey’s High Election Board on Wednesday after unrest spread across southeastern Turkey.

Zeydan is a member of the Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), one of several opposition parties that humiliated Erdogan by crushing his AKP party in local elections over the weekend. It was the worst defeat AKP has suffered since Erdogan came to power over two decades ago.

Erdogan and his officials often accuse the DEM party of being in league with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a violent separatist organization that Erdogan regards as Turkey’s primary security threat. 

Zeydan walloped his AKP rival, Abdullah Arvas, by a margin of 55-27 in the election on Sunday, and DEM did very well across the Kurdish-heavy southeast, winning control of nine municipal governments and the mayoralty of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the region. 

Unfortunately, the AKP-controlled central government has a history of disqualifying pro-Kurdish officials after accusing them of ties to the PKK. In Zeydan’s case, the regional election commission decided he was ineligible to hold office two days after he won the election because he was jailed from 2016 to 2022 for protesting Turkish airstrikes against PKK fighters.

Protests exploded across the city of Van and the surrounding province after Zeydan was disqualified. The authorities responded with a harsh crackdown, turning water cannon against the protesters and arresting 89 of them because they demonstrated without permission, scuffled with police, and chanted slogans in support of the banned PKK. 

In the city of Siirt, supporters of another opposition party called DEVA clashed with AKP party members in the streets, resulting in five injuries and one death. The fatality was identified as the brother of a DEVA candidate.

DEM party leaders denounced the electoral board’s decision as “absolute lawlessness,” an “ambush” of democracy, and a “trap set against the Kurdish people.”

DEM received immediate support from the largest opposition party, CHP, which also condemned the disqualification of Zeydan as an “ambush” and a “disgrace.”

“If the people of Van elect someone as their mayor by voting for him three times more, then it is our duty to be respectful of this,” said CHP leader Ozgur Ozel, referring to Zeydan’s margin of victory over Arvas.

Ozel dispatched a group of four CHP members of parliament to Van to “show solidarity and follow events on the spot.”

“We will be following this meaningless practice of double standards from Van,” vowed CHP superstar Ekrem Imamoglu, re-elected as mayor of Istanbul on Sunday and a probable rival for Erdogan if he runs again.

On Wednesday, Turkey’s High Election Board reversed the regional commission’s decision, reinstating Zeydan as the mayor-elect of Van, adding another humiliation to AKP’s dismal tally.

“The Supreme Election Council (YSK) has decided to grant the mandate to our Co-Mayor of Van, Abdullah Zeydan, thanks to the resistance of the Kurdish people, our comrades, friends, and the democratic public,” the jubilant DEM party announced.

“The response has been given both at Newroz and here, the Kurdish people’s demands for democracy cannot be suppressed by pressure and appointing trustees. Our call to the AK Party government is that as long as you usurp the will of the people, you are doomed to lose,” said DEM co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan.

Kurdish news service Rudaw postulated on Monday that DEM was actually a “strategic loser” in the weekend elections, because so many of its voters defected to CHP so they could vote for Imamoglu, the charismatic heavyweight contender who might finally be able to land a knockout punch on Erdogan after twenty years. There is good reason to believe those voters will not come home to DEM if Imamoglu makes a run at the presidency in 2028.