Arrests and protests after local elections in Turkey

After the local elections in Turkey, numerous people demonstrated against the subsequent exclusion of a pro-Kurdish politician who had won a mayoralty. Images from the city of Van distributed by the pro-Kurdish DEM party yesterday showed streets full of demonstrators.

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After protests on Tuesday, a total of 89 people have already been arrested, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter. The arrests took place in the southeast of the country and in the coastal metropolis of Izmir.

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There were also protests in Istanbul. According to media reports, the police sometimes used tear gas. To justify the arrests, the Interior Minister wrote that the demonstrators had thrown stones and shouted slogans in support of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

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The governor of Van province banned gatherings for 15 days, according to the state news agency. The background to the protests is the subsequent exclusion of the elected pro-Kurdish mayor in the city of Van, Abdullah Zeydan, from the election. According to his pro-Kurdish DEM party, Zeydan was denied the certificate of appointment even though he was elected mayor on Sunday with around 55 percent of the vote.

Instead, the AKP’s second-place candidate will be appointed mayor by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to preliminary results, this only reached around 27 percent. According to Anadolu, the local electoral authority justified its decision by saying that Zeydan had a criminal record and therefore should not have stood for election. The authorities had approved Zeydan as a candidate in the election on Sunday weeks ago.