Dismissed Diyarbakır Mayor Mızraklı: Those who resist will have the last say
Photo: Selçuk Mızraklı / Twitter
Click to read the article in Turkish
On the anniversary of his dismissal as the Diyarbakır Mayor, Dr. Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı sent a statement from Bünyan Prison in Kayseri, where is serving a nine-year prison sentence for "terrorism."
The Ministry of Interior replaced the mayors of three larger cities —Diyarbakır, Van and Mardin— in the Kurdish-majority southeast with "trustees" on August 19, 2019.
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Put on trial for "membership of a terrorist organization," Mızraklı was remanded in custody in October and was sentenced to 9 years, 4 months and 15 days in March.
"Local governments are the areas where local people feel a little more comfortable against the bureaucratic and repressive regime of the state. Although they are under the governance of the central administration, the functioning here is a little bit more democratic and social because they are governed by the mayors and council members elected by the people's vote," Mızraklı said at the beginning of the statement.
Running municipalities in many countries since 1999, the Kurds introduced "socialist municipalism" to Turkey and laid the foundations of "alternative municipalism" in the country, according to Mızraklı.
"It provided the possibility of development to the cultures and languages that were assimilated by force, oppression and massacres, that were attempted to be annihilated. With the approach of multilingual municipalism, it has begun to serve people living in cities in their mother tongues.
"The color of life and the language of the local have changed with the participation of women, who were ignored and murdered, in local governments. It has made politics and the local to abandon masculine language.
"With the co-chairpersonship system, it brought a new dimension to gender relations. It has claimed a language, history, memory and culture that was attempted to be destroyed."
"We will not give upp our struggle"
"Corruption, attacks on language, culture, history and women are evident. What was to be done with the trustees who were appointed in this period was not only seizing the economic resources of the municipality and distributing them to their partisans," Mızraklı said, adding that the mayor dismissals were also aimed at "destroying social gains and imposing genocide on a people."
"Even if they appoint colonial governors to the municipalities of the people and arrest us, who were elected by the people, and give us hundreds of years of prison sentences, we will not give up our struggle.
"We will never lose our faith in the democratic struggle and democratize the republic with the democratic struggle. The history of humanity has always shown that those who resist always have the last say.
"Despite these practices of genocide and massacre, this people will not kneel down before you and will destroy the reign of these tyrants with their resistance."
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What happened? Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı was dismissed as Diyarbakır Mayor by the Ministry of Interior on August 19, 2019, on the grounds of an ongoing "terrorism-related" against him. He was taken into custody on October 21, as part of an investigation conducted by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. He was remanded in custody one day later on charges of "propagandizing for a terrorist organization" and "membership of a terrorist organization." The indictment issued by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office was accepted by the Diyarbakır 11th Heavy Penal Court on November 11. Mızraklı has been facing 7.5 to 15 years in prison on the offenses charged. His indictment refers to the accounts of witness H.B.A., based on which Mızraklı was arrested. H.B.A. alleged that a "Hogır" code-named Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) member was taken to a private hospital in Diyarbakır after being wounded, he was operated by Mızraklı and discharged from the hospital without being turned over to security forces. However, according to Social Security Institution (SGK) records, H.B.A. was not working at the hospital at the time when Mızraklı allegedly did the surgery. Arrested for 1 month in 2018 as part of an investigation into the DTK, Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı faced one lawsuit and eight investigations on charges of "establishing and leading an armed terrorist organization, being a member of an armed terrorist organization, propagandizing for a terrorist organization and praising the crime and the criminal." Receiving 490,507 votes (62.93 percent) in the last local elections on March 31, 2019, Mızraklı was elected the Metropolitan Co-Mayor of Diyarbakır. About Adnan Selçuk Mızraklı Physician and politician. He was elected mayor of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in the local elections on March 31, 2019. He was dismissed from his post on August 19, 2019, and was replaced with a trustee. Mızraklı served as an MP from the HDP between June 2018 and March 2019. He held various positions at the Diyarbakır Chamber of Medicine, including the chairpersonship. He is the founding chairperson and a board member of the Mesopotamia Foundation. He was born in 1963 in Siverek, Urfa in southeastern Turkey. He is currently held at Bünyan Prison in Kayseri province. |
(SO/VK)