Two months after winning local elections, the state governor has taken the place of the pro-Kurdish party mayor in southeast Turkey who was detained by police on Monday for suspected ties to extremists, according to the interior ministry.
Due to allegations of affiliation with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkiye imprisoned pro-Kurdish mayors following prior municipal elections, removing almost all of them from office and replacing them with state representatives.
The ministry said in a statement on X that Mehmet Siddik Akis, the mayor of the province of Hakkari, which borders both Iran and Iraq, was charged with playing a senior position in the PKK militant organization.
Police teams searched the Hakkari municipal building, according to a security source, and prevented members of Akis’ pro-Kurdish DEM party—the third-largest in Turkiye’s parliament—from entering.
Although Akis and his attorney could not be reached for comment right away, his party was scheduled to conduct a press conference to discuss the state of affairs. DEM has consistently denied having any ties to the PKK.
“The government, consistently overthrown by the people’s will, has once more turned to its most effective tactic: usurping the people’s will and carrying out a coup,” DEM stated in a statement regarding the mayor’s detention.
DEM demonstrated its dominance in the region on March 31 when it emerged victorious in ten provinces in the southeast, which is predominantly Kurdish.
DEM and its pro-Kurdish antecedents are accused by Turkish authorities of having connections to the PKK, which the US, the EU, and Turkiye have all labeled as a terrorist organization.
Since the PKK’s separatist insurgency against the Turkish state began in 1984, over 40,000 people have died in it.
