Türkiye's Supreme Election Council (YSK) on Wednesday accepted the appeal of the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP) to reinstate the election of candidate Abdullah Zeydan, who won Sunday’s mayoral election in the eastern province of Van.
According to YSK director Ahmet Yener, the justification for Zeydan’s reinstatement will be released on Thursday.
Zeydan had garnered over 55% of the vote in Van, which lies on Lake Van, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Türkiye's eastern border with Iran. After he was found ineligible to be elected due to his criminal record, the next candidate who won the most votes, ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate Abdülahad Arvas, was declared the winner of the election.
While the YSP, informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), contested the ruling, its supporters took to the streets in Van and other cities, from Hakkari to Istanbul, to protest the decision, upon the encouragement of party officials.
Mass riots and authorized protests were halted by security forces and a total of 340 suspects were detained in 14 cities for what Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said violated assembly regulations, chanting slogans in support of the PKK terror group and throwing stones at security forces.
The cities included Van, Hakkari, Siirt, Batman and Şırnak in the southeast and the western port city of Izmir. Except for Şırnak, all southeastern provinces were places where the YSP won the municipal vote on Sunday.
Notably in several Istanbul districts, a total of 132 suspects were detained after they attempted to organize unauthorized rallies and a press conference regarding the Van incident, the city governorate said Thursday.
The YSK ruling followed a last-minute reversal of a court verdict that had restored his right to stand for election. Zeydan, who had been elected lawmaker on an HDP ticket in 2015, was arrested a year later. He was charged with terrorist propaganda and aiding and abetting the PKK and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Zeydan is known for his notorious remark, “The PKK could suffocate Türkiye just with its spit," which he uttered in a rally before his imprisonment. His sentence issued by a local court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır was overturned by a higher court.
After a lengthy legal process during which he was held in custody, Zeydan was released but had a political ban. A court later lifted the ban but prosecutors appealed the verdict, shortly before the municipal election. A lower court sided with the prosecutor’s office and reimposed the political ban.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) chairperson, on Wednesday evening described the riots as “attempts to revive terror groups in death throes.”
“Certain people were trying to terrorize our streets again but our security forces stepped in and prevented these provocations from growing further,” Erdoğan said at an iftar dinner with security forces in Ankara.
He was referring to similar riots incited by PKK terrorists in eastern provinces during the peak of its bloody insurgency, which has killed over 40,000 people in Türkiye since the 1980s. The PKK is widely responsible for distorting the struggle of Kurdish citizens in Türkiye into a violent form and using it as a pretext to legitimize its separatist agenda, the so-called Kurdish self-rule. It was mostly Kurdish residents in southeastern provinces who suffered the brunt of its violence, losing children and loved ones to forced recruitment, their homes to bombing strikes, and regional peace to the PKK’s brutality and strict state measures to contain it.
Ankara’s most recent reconciliation efforts with the group collapsed by 2015 when the terrorists resumed attacks, leading to a resurgence of violence across the region. Most notable was the 2015 “Kobani” riots that that gave rise to clashes between pro-PKK and conservative Kurdish groups and security forces that left 31 dead, 350 injured and a slew of HDP members convicted of funneling funds to PKK terrorists for the protests.
“We will never disrespect the nation’s willpower and decisions but we also cannot allow terrorist overlords in Qandil to plague our citizens, sabotage peace in our cities and reopen the wounds of a long gone past,” Erdoğan stressed, meaning PKK's headquarters in northern Iraq.
“We do not see the fight against terrorism as independent of democratization, nor do we see democratization as independent of the economy,” he added. “Achievements in these fields develop, glorify and support the other.”
In Sunday's municipal elections, the YSP made a strong comeback in the southeast and eastern Türkiye, taking back the municipalities it lost after the 2019 elections due to the appointment of trustees. The government installed trustees in YSP-run municipalities when dozens among them were found engaged in activities in support of the PKK.
