The World Briefly
April 05, 2024Volte-face
Turkey
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Turkey’s top electoral authority on Wednesday reinstated a pro-Kurdish opposition politician who won Sunday’s mayoral election but whose subsequent disqualification from office sparked large protests in the southeastern city of Van, dealing an additional blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, the Financial Times reported.
The Supreme Election Board reversed the regional authorities’ decision to remove Abdullah Zeydan, the winning candidate from the Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), from the co-mayorship in Van, a city near the Iranian border. The announcement set off celebrations that lasted into Thursday.
Zeydan won 55 percent of the vote in Sunday’s local election, defeating the mayoral hopeful from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) by 28 percentage points. However, earlier this week, provincial electoral authorities claimed Zeydan’s criminal record made him ineligible to hold office and said he would be replaced by the AKP’s candidate, Al Jazeera explained.
Zeydan was jailed in 2016 for allegedly producing terrorist propaganda – he had criticized a Turkish military campaign against Kurdish fighters. He was released in 2022.
Protesters took to the streets of Van on Tuesday, accusing Erdogan of interfering in the outcome of the election. Though the president had promised not to meddle, his government has a history of repression of Kurdish rights, arresting public figures, appointing “caretaker” mayors, and enacting anti-terrorism laws – such as those that saw Zeydan serve jail time.
Following violent scenes on Tuesday night, Turkish authorities reversed their decision to remove Zeydan, adding to the series of blows the AKP has suffered since suffering severe losses in Sunday’s local elections, coming second to the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which secured Turkey’s major cities, including Istanbul and Ankara.
Following the election, the CHP accused Erdogan of withholding more than $1.8 billion in investment funds destined for those cities, Bloomberg reported. The funds are needed to develop renewable energy schemes and urban public transportation. Though the government denied the CHP’s allegations, the opposition reminded the public of Erdogan’s comments after last year’s deadly earthquake that uncooperative local governments would receive “nothing.”
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