Kurdish mayor sentenced to 15 years in Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, VAN, Turkey (K24) – On Monday, a Turkish criminal court in the city of Van (Wan) sentenced the Metropolitan Co-mayor of the Kurdish city, Bekir Kaya, to 15 years in prison, on charges of membership to the "PKK/KCK terrorist organisation."

KCK is the Kurdish abbreviation for the Group of Communities in Kurdistan, an organization founded in 2005 by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) aiming to implement "Democratic Confederalism", the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan's ideas of self-rule.

K24 Diyarbakir bureau chief reported that the Van Court gave 12 other local politicians from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) sentences ranging between seven to 15 years in prison with the same charges.

Lawyers defending Kaya and others stated that they will appeal the sentence, reported Turkish Dogan news agency.

After the court ruling on his case, Kaya defiantly tweeted "sentences given to us are not worth talking about, compared to the pain Mother Taybet [Inan] suffered for a whole week. We are right. We will win."

Mother of 11, Taybet Inan was killed on December 18 outside her home in the town of Silopi during the ongoing curfew imposed by authorities earlier in the month. Her family could not retrieve her body from the street for seven days, as clashes between the Turkish Army and PKK affiliates went on.

Turkish police detained Bekir Kaya, elected as mayor in 2009, in a so-called KCK operation in Van on June 7, 2012. Ten days later, the Turkish Ministry of Interior suspended him from duty, with no court ruling yet, on charges of membership to an armed terrorist organisation. He was reinstated in April, 2013 when the court freed him pending trial after almost 300 days in prison.

Kaya was reelected in Turkish local elections, in 2014.

The "KCK operations," as dubbed by the Turkish media, started with the detainment of more than 150 politicians mostly from the now-dissolved Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in dozens of Kurdish and Turkish cities in 2009.

During several waves of operations throughout Turkey between the years 2009–2012, dozens of mayors, hundreds of local politicians and thousands of people, including journalists, academics and activists were arrested, tried and put in prison.

(Hesen Kako contributed to this report from Diyarbakir)