Ocalan’s last contact with the outside world was in April 2015, with parliamentarians from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), who were acting as mediators in the peace process.
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Turkey’s battle against the PKK has a renewed sense of urgency since a ceasefire collapsed last year and as Kurdish groups in Syria’s tangled five-year war seek to carve out an autonomous Kurdish enclave on Turkey’s border.
But Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag denied the authorities had ridden roughshod over democracy, accusing the suspended mayors of funnelling revenues to “terror” groups.
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.
Anadolu said Abdullah Ocalan’s message was relayed Monday by his brother Mehmet Ocalan, who was allowed to visit the PKK leader at his island prison south of Istanbul the day before the Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha.
“The Kurdish problem will become even harder to solve. the people will not yield to this mentality”, it said, calling on the government to stop “taking advantage” of the failed coup.
The mayors, who include 24 district mayors, two provincial mayors and two county mayors, a lot of them from the eastern portion of the country, are being prosecuted on charges of assisting the two groups, the Interior Ministry said.
The mayors represent a small fraction of people fired or arrested since the July 15 coup attempt that killed at least 240 people and 40 coup plotters.
The ministry said in its statement that when local governments “come under the influence of terrorist organizations, it is the state’s primary duty to take precautions against those who have usurped the people’s will”.
Protests also erupted at four municipalities in Batman Province, where police deployed tear gas and water cannons, and in the Suruc district of Sanliurfa Province, the paper reported. Ankara blamed Gulen, a US-based cleric and the president’s former ally, for plotting the attempt to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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Turkey has sent dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops into Syria as part of Operation Euphrates Shield aimed at expelling both IS militants and Kurdish militia from the border area. He called that a “first step” in the fight against the Islamic State, which he calls Daesh. His chief of military staff said the operation would “continue decisively”.
