Turkiye’s poll body reverses pro-Kurd mayor’s ineligibility

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party on Wednesday said the country’s election authority had reinstated a mayoral election winner in the eastern city of Van, after clashes over the annulment of his victory. The DEM party’s Abdullah Zeydan garnered more than 55 per cent of the vote in Van in local elections on Sunday.

But the regional electoral commission claimed he was ineligible to stand due to a previous conviction and instead handed city hall to a candidate from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), who managed only 27pc.

However, the Supreme Election Board (YSK) has since “decided to give the certificate of election to our Van... mayor Abdullah Zeydan,” DEM wrote on X, formerly Twitter. It added that the move was “a result of the resistance of the Kurdish people”.

The regional commission’s ineligibility decision followed the last-minute reversal of a court verdict that had restored Zeydan’s right to stand for office. Zeydan, who was elected as an MP on the HDP (now DEM) ticket in 2015, was arrested and jailed in 2016 after criticising the Turkish army’s air campaign against outlawed Kurdish militants in the Kurdish-majority southeast. He was released in 2022.

Violent protests against his ouster lasted through the night in Van province, which lies on Turkiye’s eastern border with Iran. The local governor’s office banned all demonstrations for two weeks after violent scuffles spread to several cities in the region, with some protesters setting police barricades on fire.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 89 people were detained, 26 of them in Van province, for joining unauthorised rallies and chanting slogans in praise of a “separatist terror organisation”, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has been blacklisted by Turkiye and its Western allies.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2024