Turkey seizes Kurdish municipality, drapes in flags

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Turkey’s Ministry of Interior seized the Municipality of the Kurdish town of Idil with a government decree on Monday over alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Idil, a town of 70,000 people in Sirnak Province bordering the Kurdistan Region, is the 29th population center whose municipality has been seized by the Turkish government in September.

The Interior Ministry appointed the town’s sub-governor Ersin Tepeli as a trustee to act as mayor, and ousted the elected Co-mayor Mehmet Muhdi Arslan, said the Kurdistan24 Diyarbakir bureau.

A Turkish prosecutor launched a judicial inquiry against the Mayor with accusations of “inciting the people to armed rebellion against the Government of the Republic of Turkey, making propaganda for a terrorist organization, and creating hatred and enmity among the population,” said the private owned Dogan news agency.

Arslan, of the now dissolved Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), was elected with 79 percent of votes in Turkey’s March 2014 local elections.

The other Co-mayor and a member of the town council, Nevin Girasun, has been in detention since late August with charges of aiding and abetting a terror group.

After the seizure of the municipality, the new government-appointed trustee and Turkish security forces draped the building in Turkish flags.

On Sep. 11, alleging terror-related crimes, the Turkish Interior Ministry seized 28 municipalities, 24 of them Kurdish Democratic Regions Party or DBP-held.

A spokesperson for the Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest block at the Turkish Parliament, Ayhan Bilgen described the dismissal of elected mayors as “groundwork for a civil war.”

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany