Turkey sacks pro-Kurdish co-mayors, seizes municipality

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkish authorities on Sunday sacked the elected co-mayors of the central Akdeniz district in the Mediterranean city of Mersin in southern Turkey and seized the administration of their municipality by appointing a government trustee.

The dismissed co-mayor Yuksel Mutlu was arrested in a wave of mass detentions by anti-terror police units on Monday along 234 other officials and members of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and Democratic Regions Party (DBP).

The other co-mayor Fazil Turk was still being sought as a prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for him.

Mutlu and Turk were elected with 29.8 percent of votes with a narrow margin over the Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate in 2014 local elections.

The Interior Ministry appointed the Akdeniz subgovernor to the Municipality as a trustee to run the district's affairs, said the government-run Anadolu Agency.

Armed riot police and armored vehicles surrounded the municipality building in Akdeniz, as other units conducted a search inside, confiscating computers and dossiers.

Akdeniz is the 44th Kurdish-run municipality seized by the authorities.

Others, mostly in the geographic Kurdistan, were run by the DBP which won 103 townships, districts, and cities in the 2014 elections.

The seizure of municipalities signaled last year by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu began in September in a Turkey under the state of emergency in the aftermath of the failed mid-July military coup attempt.

The Diyarbakir Provincial co-mayors Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli were detained and imprisoned in late October.

Veteran politician and co-mayor of Mardin Ahmet Turk also remains in prison since November.

Editing by Ava Homa