“It should have been taken sooner, and it was my advice to do so earlier”, Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul after attending prayers to mark the Eid Al-Adha holiday.
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Turkey should revive a peace process to end three-decades of conflict with Kurdish militants, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan said, in comments relayed by his brother on Monday.
Turkey views the Kurdish militia fighters in northern Syria as an extension of the PKK and fears that Kurdish gains there will fuel separatist sentiment on its own soil.
Using special powers under the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the abortive putsch, they have been replaced by state-appointed trustees, similar to administrators appointed to head a company that goes into bankruptcy.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose regional politicians were the among the chief targets of the move, denounced the reshuffle as a “coup”.
The United Nations said on Friday the Syrian government had effectively stopped aid convoys this month and the besieged city of Aleppo was close to running out of fuel, making a successful truce even more urgent.
Another four are thought to be linked to Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric accused by the government of being behind the coup attempt.
The interior ministry said the mayors, 12 of whom are formally under arrest, were under investigation for providing “assistance and support” to the PKK and to FETO.
They were the first public comments from Ocalan in more than a year, after the government suspended visits to his island prison in April 2015, and they come at a time of violence and political upheaval.
He said the Feto group was behind the July 15 attempted coup, and the PKK/Democratic Union Party in Syria would be stopped like the PKK in Turkey.
Meanwhile, security forces used water cannon to disperse a protest in Diyarbakir, an AFP correspondent said.
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Shani Cooper, diplomatic attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Ankara, shakes hands with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a reception in the Turkish capital on August 30, 2016. Russian Federation and the U.S. will also set up a joint centre to fight militant outfits such as the Islamic State group and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham ten days after the end of fighting and the delivery of aid to the region.
