HDP Denounces Appointment of Trustees: Remaining Silent Means Giving Approval

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

After the Ministry of Interior has announced that Diyarbakır Metropolitan Mayor Selçuk Mızraklı, Mardin Metropolitan Mayor Ahmet Türk and Van Metropolitan Mayor Bedia Özgökçe Ertan have been removed from office and governors of the provinces have been appointed as acting mayors, the People's Democratic Party (HDP) has released a statement for the press and denounced the appointment of trustees to HDP's Metropolitan Municipalities.

CLICK - Mayors of Diyarbakır, Mardin and Van Removed from Office

In its statement entitled "We will not be silenced, we will not be stopped", the party has reminded the public that Diyarbakır Mayor has been elected by receiving 63 percent of the votes, Mardin Mayor by receiving 56 percent of the votes and Van Mayor by receiving 53 percent.

'A new and clear political coup'

The full text of the statement is as follows:

"Our Municipal Co-chairs, who were elected with 63% of the vote in Diyarbakır, 56% of the vote in Mardin and 53% of the vote in Van, have been removed from duty with an Interior Ministry order based on lies and unlawful grounds. A severe operation of detentions targeting our municipal council members and employees continues at this moment.

"This is a new and clear political coup. It also constitutes a clearly hostile move against the political will of the Kurdish people. The Interior Ministry is acting as the enforcer of decisions and practices that usurp rights and freedoms, carry out provocations and leave not even a single grain of democracy behind.

'Government has no longer any legitimacy'

"During the period of kayyıms- the unelected administrators appointed by the state, the resources of all municipalities were squandered, leaving a wreck behind. As reports of the Supreme Court of Public Accounts have revealed, the Interior Ministry and the government have become a center of corruption and embezzlement.

"This government and the Interior Ministry have not been able to digest the fact that the corruption and irregularities of the kayyım period and the disgrace of the kayyıms who stole and wasted public resources have been revealed. Since the local military and civilian bureaucracy also fed off this system of corruption, they also became supporters of the period of kayyıms.

"This government no longer has even a modicum of democratic legitimacy. To usurp the will of the people, and to extort what they could not gain at the elections, through state violence, force and trickery have become the practices of this AKP-MHP alliance.

'We call for solidarity'

"The people will never accept such practices. As in the past, the people will claim and protect their will, its elected representatives and its party.

"Against this government that usurps the will of the people and refuses to accept the ballot and the elections, we hereby issue our call for solidarity to all forces of democracy, to all our citizens who carry a conscience, to all oppositions parties in or outside Parliament, to all civilian society organizations, to unions and professional associations and to all democratic associations.

'Don't remain silent, it will mean approving'

"It is an indisputable right, in both the constitutional sense, and in terms of universal law, to use all manners of legitimate and democratic methods of struggle against this government. We can win democracy only through the common and determined struggle of the forces of democracy.

"This is our call to everyone who voted at the 31 March and 23 June elections across Turkey for democracy, and against the AKP-MHP alliance. This is not only the problem of the HDP and the Kurdish people, but the common problem of all the peoples of Turkey and all forces of democracy. Do not remain silent -to remain silent is to give approval." (TP/SD)