The mayors of four other municipalities, three from the ruling AK Party and one from the nationalist MHP opposition, were also removed on Sunday over alleged links to Gulen. The Turkish government says they were discharged for links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). He denies the charge.
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The crackdown comes as Ankara also pushes ahead with a purge of tens of thousands of supporters of us -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Turkey of orchestrating an attempted coup in July.
“This illegal rearrangement, which disregards the voters’ will and renders the elected local authorities and institutions useless, has no basis for us”, it said in a statement.
The affected areas are mostly in the east and southeast of the country, including the provincial capitals Hakkari and Batman and districts within the provinces of Agri, Van, Diyarbakir, Erzurum, Igdir, Mardin, Sanliurfa and Mus. Twelve of the mayors have been arrested, its statement said. Co-mayor Fatma Yildiz, who was replaced on Sunday morning, said the decision was “a blow against the will of the people”, Dogan reported.
There were scuffles between protesters and police outside the town hall in Hakkari and also in Suruc in the Sanliurfa region where dozens were killed previous year in an IS suicide bombing, Dogan said.
“We are determined to wipe out the PKK trouble from Turkey together with our security forces”, he said.
The embassy said it supported Turkey’s right to defend itself against terrorism, but emphasizes the importance of respect for due process and the right to peaceful protest.
Critics have accused the government of using the state of emergency to impose a draconian crackdown that has eroded freedom of expression in Turkey.
The PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies. All three provinces are in Turkey’s southeast, along its border with Syria and Iraq.
The pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party, or HDP, condemned the appointments as a “coup by trustees” that violates the Turkish constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.
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However the activists in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir said they would continue their action until the family returns with concrete confirmation that he is alive and well. “Being an elected official isn’t a licence to commit crimes”.
