Turkish police on Tuesday (October 25) detained the co-mayors of the mainly Kurdish southeast's biggest city, part of a government crackdown after more than a year of militant violence in the region, security sources said. Gultan Kisanak, a former parliamentarian before her election as mayor in Diyarbakir, and Firat Anli, her co-mayor, were taken into custody as part of the local prosecutor's investigation into terrorism links, the sources said; Reuters reported.
President Tayyip Erdogan has said the removal of elected officials and civil servants who are accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organisation. Authorities were also searching the mayor's office, security sources said.
An aide to Kisanak said the mayor's home was being searched by police but was unable to provide further details and did not know what the pair were accused of. Turkey appointed new administrators in two dozen Kurdish-run municipalities in September after removing their elected mayors over suspected links to militants. Those arrests triggered protests across the region.
Police formed a security cordon around city hall in the event the latest detentions stirred unrest, witnesses said. Kisanak, 55, is a well-known Kurdish political figure and became Diyarbakir's first female mayor in 2014. Earlier on Tuesday, she testified upon the invitation of lawmakers at a parliamentary commission in Ankara looking into a failed military coup on July 15.
It was not immediately clear whether her testimony was related to the detention order. Kisinak was detained upon her return to Diyarbakir at the airport, while Anli was detained at his home, sources said. Erdogan accuses their opposition party, the Democratic Regions Party, a sister party to the third-biggest grouping in parliament, of links with the PKK, which both parties deny.
The PKK took up arms in against the Turkish state in 1984. It abandoned a fragile two-year ceasefire in July 2015 after peace talks had ground to a halt, and violence has escalated sharply since. Hundreds of soldiers and police officers, thousands of militants and about 400 civilians have been killed.
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