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US says concerned by unrest in southeast Turkey after mayors removed
Turkey’s government has said the failed coup, which left 240 people dead, was organized by followers of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg, Pa., and by his social service organizations in Turkey, which the Turkish government has labeled together as the “Fetullah Terrorist Organization”.
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Twenty four of those removed are suspected of ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the other four of links to the Gulen movement allegedly responsible for the attempted coup in July which killed over 270 people.
The mayors are being replaced by trustees appointed by the government.
Since the two-year peace process broke down, the Turkish government has taken a hard-line stance to the Kurdish problem, destroying several towns seized by militants and clamping down on the legal pro-Kurdish political movement in the country.
The move is the most important step yet taken by new Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu since he took over from Efkan Ala in a surprise reshuffle earlier this month.
Individual members of Turkey’s Parliament have said that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party are using the failed coup to cleanse the government of opposition. The incumbents had all been elected in 2014 local polls.
There were also disturbances in the main regional city of Diyarbarkir and in Hakkari province near the Iraqi border, where police entered the municipality building and unfurled a large red Turkish flag, taking down the white local government flags that had previously flown.
He said the mayors had been removed from their posts in line with the law, and denounced the American statement as “interference in Turkey’s domestic affairs”.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose regional politicians were among the chief targets of the move, denounced the removal of the mayors as a “coup”.
Turkey was stronger, more resolute and more dynamic than before coup attempt, Erdogan said.
“Being elected does not grant a right to commit a crime”, he wrote on Twitter.
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Some Turkish media reports said that the internet and electricity had been cut off in the affected cities.