On November 4, Turkish authorities removed the elected Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party co-mayors of Mardin, Batman, and Halfeti districts and replaced them with “trustees” loyal to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). To date, a total of four DEM municipalities that the pro-Kurdish DEM Party won in this year’s local elections have been taken over by the central government in this way, depriving 362,684 voters of their chosen elected representation. Reports suggest that 37 remaining DEM municipalities may be next.

The mass disenfranchisement of millions of predominantly Kurdish voters at the local level became one of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s signature policies after his government abandoned negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015. It has dire consequences for the pro-Kurdish political movement’s efforts to end that conflict and build the foundations of a just, equal, and democratic peace.

With the prospect of new peace talks back on the agenda in Turkey, pro-Kurdish politicians are calling on the international community to understand what is at stake as they defend their unique concept of local democracy.

Preventing Peace

On October 10, news broke of alleged talks between the Turkish government and Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder and leader of the PKK. Far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli subsequently called for Ocalan appear before the Turkish Parliament to “end terrorism” and disband his organization altogether.

On October 23, Ocalan was allowed to meet with his relatives, his first contact with the outside world in nearly four years. His nephew, DEM MP Omer Ocalan, shared a message from the meeting. Since then, though, Ocalan has not been able to meet with his family or lawyers or pass on any further messages.

Bahceli’s maximalist demands alone are almost certainly unacceptable for Ocalan and the movement he leads. Many observers believe that the PKK’s disarmament would constitute the final stage of any serious peace initiative. It would have to follow Turkish state reforms that would reassure PKK decision-makers and the Kurdish communities that support armed struggle that peaceful avenues for politics were open.

Municipalities constitute some of the few spaces where Kurdish communities can practice limited self-governance. Since the early 2000s, pro-Kurdish parties have used them to test some of the policies that they see as part of a solution to the Kurdish issue at the national level, like participatory democracy, the recognition of non-Turkish languages and cultures, and truth and justice initiatives.

Attacking municipalities is unlikely to make the government’s weak offer any more appealing to Kurds. To the contrary, Kurdish Peace Institute data suggests that municipal districts where pro-Kurdish mayors were removed saw more political violence than districts where Erdogan’s government respected election outcomes. A recent Spectrum House poll found that 79% of Kurdish voters believed the appointments would make the Kurdish issue harder to solve.

“Strong local democracies are the core of our paradigm. Municipalities and municipal councils allow equal and fair representation of women and minorities. Through equality and shared power, it is possible to ensure societal peace and then regional peace,” explained Ceylan Akca, Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) MP for Diyarbakir.

“These attacks further prove that the ruling bloc has no intention of initiating a peace process. Instead, they hope and aim for a full, unconditional surrender of the Kurdish people,” Akca said.

Excluding Women

Violence and discrimination against Kurdish women are central to Turkey’s militarized approach to the Kurdish issue. Trustee appointments fit the trend. One recent study found that 132 women lost political office when trustees replaced elected pro-Kurdish co-mayors after the 2014 and 2019 elections. Trustee administrations shut down women’s shelters, child-care programs for working mothers, and women’s cooperatives and ended other pro-equality policies. .

Gulistan Sonuk, the deposed DEM Party mayor of Batman, ran against an Erdogan-backed Islamist with links to Turkish Hezbollah, a now-defunct Sunni jihadist paramilitary responsible for murders and disappearances of Kurdish nationalist activists in the 1990s and early 2000s. She won with a resounding sixty-five percent of the vote. Men and women celebrated her victory with chants of “jin, jiyan, azadi,” or “woman, life, freedom.”

“Since the government could not establish itself in our region, it carried out a campaign against us using these gangs. But the people of Batman still have a very fresh memory of what they [Turkish Hezbollah] did in the past. Women, especially, supported our party and frustrated what this government was trying to do,” Sonuk told the Kurdish Peace Institute.

“The government could not accept that, in a province like Batman, which is considered conservative, a young woman like me could win the highest vote share in Turkey and bring their candidate down,” she continued.