ISTANBUL: Turkiye dismissed the pro-Kurdish mayors of three southeastern cities on Monday for alleged ties to militants, just two weeks after President Tayyip Erdogan’s main ally made a proposal for ending the militants’ 40-year insurgency in the southeast.

Turkiye’s interior ministry said it had replaced the mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party in the cities of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti with government-appointed administrators.

The move, which the ministry said targeted supporters of the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), recalled past crackdowns on Kurdish politicians.

The DEM, the third largest party in Turkiye’s parliament, condemned the dismissals, saying they stood in sharp contradiction with the recent overture from Ankara that had pointed to a possible peace process in the southeast. “It is a repetition of the bankrupt attacks that have been continuing since 1994 to eliminate the Kurdish people from democratic politics,” DEM said in a statement.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2024