President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after prayers at the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday Monday that it should have been done earlier in line with his own wishes. It said it did not recognize the legitimacy of the mayors’ removal. “These attacks, which have the clear objective of disrupting Turkey’s Syria operation, are still ongoing”, Erdogan said.
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Last month, Turkey launched an offensive to remove the Islamic State from Syria’s northern border region.
He added that the country was “determined to end the PKK plague” in southeast Turkey and said the Fetullah Terror Organization (FETO) behind the July 15 attempted coup and the PKK/PYD in Syria would face the same fate as the PKK in Turkey.
He also said Turkey would defeated the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Feto group of US -based cleric Fethullah Gulen. It has since suspended tens of thousands of people from government jobs over suspected links to terrorist organizations.
Mr Erdogan said the “PKK has no chance of resistance against the power of our state”, despite an upsurge in violence that has seen hundreds of members of the security forces killed since a ceasefire ruptured in 2015.
Turkey aims to send more than 30 trucks of food, children’s clothes and toys to the Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, with a truce negotiated between the United States and Russian Federation due to come into effect at sundown, officials said.
Protesters clashed with police after the government appointed 28 municipal and district mayors in several towns in the Kurdish south-east, replacing elected officials accused of PKK sympathies dismissed on Friday.
“Mayors and town councillors, who come to power through elections, must perform their duties according to the law”, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said.
The HDP condemned the appointments as a “coup by trustees” that was reminiscent of the military takeover of 1980 and “ignored the will of the voters”.
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The United States embassy in Ankara expressed concern over the government’s actions, saying in a statement “we note the importance of respect for judicial due process and individual rights, including the right of peaceful political expression, as enshrined in the Turkish Constitution”.
