Turkey imprisons five more Kurdish mayors

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Kurdistan24) - Turkish authorities on Wednesday sent the elected mayors of five towns in the Kurdish provinces of Bitlis and Siirt to prison in the latest phase of an ongoing crackdown.

Co-mayors Ihsan Ugur of Hizan, Ozcan Birlik of Mutki and Felemez Aydin of Yolalan were arrested last week by anti-terror police units in raids on their houses.

Police arrested the co-mayor of Baykan in Siirt Selva Erdogan and the co-mayor of the town of Veysel Karani, Enes Cengiz on Tuesday, reported Kurdistan24 Diyarbakir Bureau.

All five mayors are members of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), the successor of the now-dissolved Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) which won 103 municipalities across Turkey's Kurdish region in the 2014 local elections.

With the latest pre-trial imprisonments, the number of Kurdish mayors in prison rose to 64.

Turkish prosecutors accuse the mayors of collaborating with and disseminating propaganda on behalf of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which fights government forces in a decades-long guerrilla warfare over repressed Kurdish rights.

The Interior Ministry has seized the administration of 46 municipalities, appointing trustees to run civil affairs instead of elected mayors who it sacked since September in the aftermath of the failed mid-July military coup attempt.

There are more than 2,500 members and officials of the DBP in jail, including the party's co-chair Sebahat Tuncel.

DBP is a sister party to Turkish Parliament's second-largest opposition block Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) whose co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, as well as eight other lawmakers, remain in prison since early November.

Editing by Ava Homa