Turkish Court Acquits Veteran Kurdish Politician Ahmet Türk

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – A high criminal court in Ankara has acquitted Ahmet Türk, the veteran Kurdish politician and former mayor of Mardin Metropolitan Municipality, of charges of "making propaganda for an organization."

The court's decision to dismiss the case, which was based on a speech Türk delivered more than a decade ago in 2011, by ruling that his statement fell within the scope of "freedom of expression," marks a notable, albeit isolated, victory for a figure who has become a powerful symbol of the decades-long struggle for Kurdish political rights and representation in Türkiye.

The verdict, handed down by the Ankara 14th High Criminal Court, brings a close to one of the many legal battles that have defined Türk's long and tumultuous career.

According to a report from Türkiye's IHA news agency, the 82-year-old former mayor did not personally attend the final hearing. Instead, his legal team participated in the proceedings remotely via the Sound and Video Information System (SEGBİS).

During the hearing, the prosecutor, in his formal opinion, adhered to the state's long-standing position and demanded that Türk be punished for the crime of which he was accused.

However, Türk's lawyers mounted a robust defense, arguing that their client is a career politician and that prosecuting him for a political speech made so many years prior was fundamentally unlawful.

They asserted that his words should be protected under the principles of free speech and demanded a full acquittal. Following the lawyers' statements, the presiding judge announced the court's decision, siding with the defense.

The judge stated that after a thorough evaluation, the court had determined that Ahmet Türk's statement was protected within the scope of "freedom of expression" and, crucially, that the legal "elements of the crime were not constituted," leading to the acquittal.

This legal victory, however, stands in stark contrast to the immense political and legal pressures that have been brought to bear on Türk and his political colleagues, particularly in recent times.

The acquittal comes just under a year after Türk, along with two other pro-Kurdish mayors, was summarily dismissed from his democratically elected post by Türkiye's Interior Ministry on "terrorism" charges, a move that ignited furious protests across the country's southeast and drew sharp condemnation from international rights organizations.

On November 4, 2024, the Turkish government removed Ahmet Türk as the mayor of Mardin, Gülçin Sönük as the mayor of Batman, and Mehmet Karayılan as the mayor of Halfeti district.

All three politicians belonged to the DEM Party, the main pro-Kurdish political force in the country, and had been decisively elected in the March 2024 local elections, which saw opposition candidates win in many key areas, including a powerful victory for Istanbul's opposition mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu.

The dismissals were not a new tactic but part of a "long-standing practice of appointing trustees" to replace elected Kurdish officials, a policy that critics, including Europe's top rights body, the Council of Europe, have warned is "undermining the very nature of local democracy."

In an apparent bid to preempt the inevitable public backlash, the Mardin governorate at the time imposed a 10-day ban on all forms of civil activities and demonstrations throughout the province, a measure reported by Kurdistan24.

Despite this, the dismissals triggered widespread and angry protests. According to AFP, more than 2,000 people took to the streets in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, chanting "Get out, trustees!"

In Mardin itself, Türk defied the protest ban, urging people to gather outside the town hall. He was later joined by Özgür Özel, the head of the mainstream opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), in a significant show of cross-party solidarity against the government's actions.

"We must all raise our voices against this unlawfulness, this anti-democratic behaviour which defies the will of the people," Türk declared in a video posted to social media.

The protests were met with a forceful police response. News channels T24 and MedyaScope TV reported that police in Mardin used water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. In Batman, police also used water cannons and pepper gas, arresting 75 people who were attempting to enter the town hall.

The Interior Ministry's justification for the dismissals was a string of serious allegations, ranging from belonging to an armed group to disseminating propaganda for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated a "terror" group by Türkiye and its Western allies.

The DEM Party vehemently rejected these charges, denouncing the dismissals as "a major attack on the Kurdish people's right to vote and be elected."

The party's statement captured the deep sense of frustration, asserting that "the government has adopted the habit of snatching what it couldn't win through elections through using the judiciary, the police and the trustee system."

For Ahmet Türk, a prominent and widely respected figure who has been involved in past mediation efforts to resolve the Kurdish conflict, the November 2024 dismissal was a painfully familiar experience; it was the third time in his career that he had been removed from his post as mayor.

The dismissal was further complicated by a separate and more severe legal judgment against him. In May 2024, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in connection with a wave of protests in 2014 over the Turkish government's perceived inaction as the Islamic State (IS) group overran the Kurdish-majority city of Kobani in neighboring Syria.

At the time of his dismissal as mayor, he was serving in his post pending the outcome of an appeal in that case.

The practice of replacing elected Kurdish mayors with government-appointed trustees, or kayyum, has been a deeply controversial and defining feature of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's policy in the country's southeast for years.

Ankara has removed dozens of elected Kurdish mayors and replaced them with its own loyalists, a move that the government maintains is a necessary security measure but which critics and a large portion of the local population view as a systematic disenfranchisement of the Kurdish electorate, which makes up around 20 percent of Türkiye's overall population.

In this context, the Ankara court's decision to acquit Türk on the separate propaganda charge from 2011 is a notable and surprising development.

It represents a rare instance where the Turkish judiciary has pushed back against the state's broad and often politically motivated application of anti-terror and propaganda laws against Kurdish politicians.

By explicitly citing "freedom of expression" as the basis for the acquittal, the court has, in this specific case, upheld a fundamental democratic principle that activists and rights groups argue is routinely violated in cases involving Kurdish political speech.

While the acquittal is a significant personal legal victory for Ahmet Türk, its broader implications for the political climate in Türkiye's southeast remain uncertain.

It does not reverse his dismissal as mayor, nor does it affect the separate and more serious 10-year prison sentence he is currently appealing. The systemic policy of appointing trustees and the intense judicial pressure on the DEM Party and its elected officials continue unabated.

However, the verdict does offer a small but significant glimmer of judicial independence and a potential legal precedent for other politicians facing similar charges.

For a community that has grown accustomed to seeing its political will overturned by executive decree, the court's decision, however limited in its scope, is a rare and welcome acknowledgment that the words of a politician, spoken over a decade ago, can indeed be protected as an essential part of a democratic society.