Local elections in Turkey
After protests: Pro-Kurdish politician becomes mayor
Sit-in strike and protest in Diyarbakir: “The will of the people cannot be ignored”. photo
© Mehmet Masum Suer/SOPA/ZUMA/dpa
Abdullah Zeydan was elected mayor in the city of Van with 55 percent. But the politician is subsequently excluded. Protests followed.
After protests against the exclusion of a pro-Kurdish politician from his mayoralty, the Supreme Electoral Authority of the Türkiye reversed the decision. The authority has given the politician from the pro-Kurdish Dem party, Abdullah Zeydan, the mandate for the mayor’s office in the eastern Turkish city of Van, thereby upholding his party’s objection, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
Zeydan was elected mayor in the Turkish local elections in Van with 55 percent. However, according to his party, he was refused the certificate of appointment. The local electoral authority justified its decision by saying that Zeydan had a criminal record and therefore should not have stood for election, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
The electoral authorities had already approved Zeydan as a candidate in the election weeks ago. Instead of Zeydan, the second-place candidate from the AKP, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party, should be appointed mayor. According to preliminary results, this reached around 27 percent in Van.
The Dem party, for which Zeydan ran, objected to the decision. People protested against the decision in many Turkish cities, also because the incident was reminiscent of the dismissals of pro-Kurdish local politicians in the past. In the 2019 local elections, the pro-Kurdish party under the name HDP won 65 mayoral positions – but the government in Ankara had the majority of politicians removed from office due to terrorism allegations and replaced by receivers.