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.
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Co-mayor Fatma Yildiz, who was replaced Sunday morning, said the decision was “a blow against the will of the people”, Dogan reported.
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.
Twenty-four of the outgoing mayors are accused of links to the PKK and four of links to Gulen, the ministry said.
Turkey declared a state of emergency following a failed military coup on July 15 that allows the government to rule by decree.
“There is no difference between the mentality that bombards the Parliament, the elected public will, and the mentality that storms into the municipalities shouting to have “seized power”, in an usurpation of the local public will”, the HDP said, referring to municipalities in the Kurdish areas southeastern Turkey.
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.
“Ignoring the voters’ will, rendering local administrations ineffective, this unlawful regulation is null and void for us”, the HDP said.
“Being elected does not grant a right to commit a crime”, he wrote on Twitter.
They said particularly disturbing was the detention of novelist Ahmet Altan and his brother Mehmet Altan, an economics professor, for allegedly transmitting subliminal messages to rally coup supporters on a TV show the night before the coup attempt.
Shortly after the move was announced, the authorities detained the former mayor of Cizre in Sirnak province, Leyla Imret, who in 2014 became one of Turkey’s youngest ever mayors, the Dogan news agency said.
The United States embassy in Ankara expressed concern over the government’s actions, saying in a statement that it hoped the substitute office-holders who took up their new posts Sunday would be temporary and that “local citizens will soon be permitted to choose new local officials in accordance with Turkish law”.
The Turkish military said on Wednesday that 186 PKK members had been killed in the operations conducted in the southeastern district of Cukurca over the past few days.
“Those with malicious intentions must know that they will find a Turkey with an army of 570,000 and police forces of 260,000 and a nation of 79 million”, he said.
The autonomy-seeking group abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.
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The government resumed airstrikes against the PKK two months ago in response to a sharp escalation in attacks on security forces and shootings in urban centers.
