The mayor of Istanbul’s biggest district was detained on Wednesday on charges of being a member of the PKK terrorist group.
Esenyurt Mayor Ahmet Özer was taken into custody at his home early in the morning after the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office found strong evidence he committed the said crime as a result of an investigation into his phone records, physical surveillance, bank account activities and sustained organic contact with PKK ringleaders.
Authorities searched Özer’s house, office and vehicle, and seized documents regarding his appointment in the PKK’s so-called democratic autonomy project during a meeting with the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on the prison island Imrali. The said appointment is also mentioned in organizational documents seized from other PKK suspects and delivered to the PKK stronghold in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.
Prosecutors ordered Özer’s phone to be wiretapped, which revealed the mayor held phone calls with 694 suspects linked to the PKK, as well as Remzi Kartal, a senior PKK member wanted in the red category with whom he spoke 14 times, over the course of a decade.
Özer, 64, was elected mayor of Esenyurt from the opposition’s Republican People's Party (CHP) in the March 31 local elections.
In his first comment on Özer’s detention, CHP Chair Özgür Özel described the incident as "not irrelevant to what has happened in recent weeks."
Özel was referring to a fresh outreach from the Turkish government to the PKK to end terrorism in the country and a subsequent PKK attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) that killed five and injured 22 in Ankara last Wednesday.
The attack struck days after Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), ally to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), made an unprecedented proposal that Öcalan could be granted parole on the condition that he renounce violence and dissolve the PKK.
Amid mixed responses, AK Party Chair and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has given implicit support to the surprise statement from Bahçeli, who has traditionally maintained a hardline stance against the PKK.
"We believe that it would be more beneficial to evaluate the approaches recently put forward under the leadership of our People’s Alliance partner (Bahçeli) without prejudices," Erdoğan said Tuesday.
While Öcalan welcomed the potential thaw, saying he had the "theoretical and practical power" to move the process to a political level, the PKK’s response was to attack the TAI headquarters a day later.
Bahçeli lashed out at the terrorist group and its supporters among some Turkish political parties, notably the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), for "failing to comprehend the meaning of the Turkish nation’s extended hand of tolerance." He said the terrorist group must hurry to utilize what he called their "last chance."
The PKK, which has waged its bloody terror campaign since 1984, exploited the Kurdish community to create a so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Türkiye.
Tens of thousands of people have already died in the conflict. The last attempt at peace failed in 2015 when the PKK resumed attacks during negotiations.
According to the International Crisis Group, the conflict has shifted from Türkiye to northern Iraq and northern Syria since 2019, after the Turkish military continued to push back PKK terrorists over and away from its borders, but the group still has operatives within the country.
Elsewhere in Istanbul, police detained 18 more suspects linked to the PKK in operations aimed at preventing terror attacks, which have intensified in the wake of the Ankara attack.
Police are hunting seven more suspects at large charged with plotting to incite street riots.