Ahmet Turk: “Our people’s rights were taken away, not the municipalities”

The veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk told North-Press that their case in Turkey isn’t “just the control of municipalities”, but that there are people’s rights which have been robbed, the current government is targeting the Kurdish people in particular, and it has “lost its mind” in the field of rights, noting that there are international signals that, Turkey won’t be able to stay in Syria and evade its internal collapse.
The Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk won the elections in Mardin province, in the predominantly Kurdish regions in southeast of Turkey with 56% of the vote, Turk was elected as the mayor of Mardin in 2014, but the government dismissed him and a director was assigned instead. 
On August 19 2019, the Turkish Interior Ministry announced the dismissal of three Kurdish mayors belonging to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who had won the elections in Turkey on March 31 2019, after assigning agents from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) instead, in the predominantly Kurdish cities of Diyarbakir, Van and Mardin. 
The Turkish Interior Ministry did the same between 2016 and 2017 when it sacked dozens of elected mayors in these cities, and replaced them with agents from the ruling AKP party, led by the Turkish president Erdogan. 
“I have never experienced such a period”, Ahmet Turk, who was elected to the Turkish parliament in 1973, and was active on the political scene told North-Press adding: “There has never been an era in which elections were stripped of any meaning and that faith in democracy was eliminated to such an extent”. 

“Stolen Rights”   
Ahmet Turk said that, the procedures of the Turkish government’s actions to isolate the mayors “aren’t related to any rights”, stressing that, “what was robbed from us weren’t only municipalities, but the rights of the Kurdish people”.
He pointed out that the policy of the Turkish government is based on “hostility” towards the Kurdish people, as it wants to get rid of the “political will” of the Kurds.
Mr. Turk admitted that they have no mechanism to confront the government other than “knocking on legal doors”.  
According to article 127 of the Turkish Constitution: “Local administration boards are public entities established on the aim of meeting the general needs of the population of the provinces, municipalities and villages at the local level provided that, the decision-making boards in these administrative divisions should be elected as stipulated in the law, the law also defines the principles of the organizational structure”.
The veteran Kurdish politician added that: “There is contact with the Court of Human Rights in Europe, although we are sure that there will be no results of attempts through legal mechanisms, because the government has eliminated everything called rights and law”, noting that the Turkish government “has lost its mind”. 

“Because we are Kurds!” 
Turkish President Erdogan recognizes that the Kurdish issue in Turkey is “very complex”, and has a significant impact on both domestic and foreign policy of his country, so Erdogan is working to promote the discourse of “all Kurds are terrorists” in his strategy, according to the Turkish academic and researcher Gokhan Bacik.
In the 2018 parliamentary elections, the government also dismissed Kurdish teachers, municipal officials and a number of academics who signed a petition in 2016 calling for renewed peace in dealing with the Kurdish issue.
“Some Turkish parties have supported us at this phase, and they have had honorable political attitudes, but the current Turkish government doesn’t listen to anyone and does as it likes, so there is no point in such attitudes to change”, the dismissed Mardin Mayor Ahmet Turk told North-Press.
He added: “The current Turkish government pursues two policies, the first is against its opponents and the second is against the Kurds”.
“When Ekrem Imamoglu got the Istanbul municipality for the second time elections, there was nothing for the government to do, but the Kurdish people don’t have any support or friend”, this is the truth, when the matter is the Kurds, there are no parties ready to listen to the rights and democracy”, Mr. Turk added.

Internal collapse 
The Kurdish politician believes that the Turkish government won’t be able to continue its “counter-Kurdish” policy, because it is going through internal crises which “put the fate of the whole country at stake”.
Turkey is now suffering a severe economic crisis, and the people “have lost confidence in the current government, and the voice of power is declining day by day”, according to Ahmet Turk, adding that the current authority won’t be able to manage Turkey in this way, “it has nothing to do for the country”.

North and east of Syria 
The Kurds are betting on international balances to return to the political arena after the collapse of the “peace process” 2013-2015, which was led by the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Turkish policy is now based on “exporting problems out of the borders”, Ahmet Turk said, who sees Turkey’s goal of creating a security mechanism in northeastern Syria as a game by the Turkish President Erdogan. 
“The government needs a success story, and the establishment of a security mechanism can be portrayed as a victory for Erdogan’s foreign policy, but it won’t succeed”, according to Turk.
“This policy won’t continue, and Turkey won’t continue to be in Syria, because Syria is an international arena and the superpowers won’t allow Turkey to play any role in the Syrian future”.