Turkish police used water cannons and teargas to disperse protesters Sunday after Ankara announced it had replaced 28 elected municipal and district mayors in several predominantly Kurdish towns in Turkey’s east and southeast.
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Turkey’s battle against the PKK resumed with a new intensity after a ceasefire collapsed past year and with attempts by Kurdish groups in Syria’s war to carve out an autonomous Kurdish enclave on Turkey’s border.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey had evidence the mayors had sent support to Kurdish militants and that they should have been stripped of their roles sooner. The interior ministry said 12 of the mayors suspended are already under arrest.
“We have seen that the PKK has stepped up its activities in the border region after July 15 [a failed coup attempt]”.
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.
The crackdown comes as Ankara also pushes ahead with a purge of tens of thousands of supporters of USA -based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Turkey of orchestrating the attempted coup in July. “But the PKK will not succeed, the people are openly speaking against the organization”, Erdogan said in a statement.
“Being an elected official isn’t a license to commit crimes”, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag wrote on Twitter.
Four people, including a deputy mayor, were detained after a skirmish in Hakkari province, Dogan said.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose mayors were principally affected, condemned the move as “coup by trustees”.
The claim of responsibility, on a website close to the PKK, said the attack in Van was a retaliation for the killing by security forces of Kurdish youths and the removal of the mayors “in disregard of the Kurdish people’s will”.
“This unlawful and arbitrary action will only deepen the existing problems in Kurdish towns and cause the Kurdish issue to be even more unsolvable”, it said.
“The Euphrates Shield operation is the first step towards this”, he added.
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“It is our duty to our people to finish off Daesh in Syria, and to bring them to a level where they can’t carry out attacks in our country”, he said. His chief of military staff said the operation would “continue decisively”.
