DIYARBAKIR:
Turkey yesterday replaced Kurdish mayors with state officials in three cities
and detained more than 400 people for suspected militant links, the Interior
Ministry said, a move likely to fuel tensions in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
The ministry also said it had launched an operation with some 2,300 commandos
against militant fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in
southeastern provinces.

The mayors of
three major southeastern cities - Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van - are accused of
various crimes including membership of a terrorist organization and spreading
terrorist group propaganda, the ministry said in a statement. Riot police fired
water cannon on small groups of people protesting against the mayors' dismissal
in central Diyarbakir, where police sealed off the municipality headquarters
with metal barriers, Reuters TV video showed. President Tayyip Erdogan had
warned ahead of local elections in March of such a move against elected
officials if they were found to have had connections to the PKK.

"For the
health of the investigations, they have been temporarily removed from their
posts as a precaution," the ministry said, referring to Diyarbakir Mayor
Selcuk Mizrakli, Mardin Mayor Ahmet Turk and Van Mayor Bedia Ozgokce Ertan.
Police detained 418 people in 29 provinces in a related investigation targeting
suspects with links to the PKK, the ministry added. The pro-Kurdish Peoples'
Democratic Party (HDP), to which the three mayors belong, said they had been
dismissed "on an order based on lies and illegal justifications".

"This is a
new and clear political coup. It is a clear and hostile stance against the
political will of the Kurdish people," the HDP executive board said in a
written statement. It said the three mayors had been elected with between 53%
to 63% of the vote in their cities in March and called for support from other
political parties. "This is not just the problem of the HDP and the
Kurdish people. It is the shared problem of all Turkey's peoples and all
democratic forces," it added.

Opposition slams
dismissals

Veli Agbaba,
deputy leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), wrote on
Twitter that the dismissals were tantamount to fascism and a blow against
democracy, while Istanbul's CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoglu also slammed the move.
"Negating the will of the people is unacceptable," he wrote on
Twitter.

Imamoglu himself
was removed from office over irregularities shortly after coming to power in
the March election, but won a re-run election in June. More unusually, Turkey's
former president Abdullah Gul and ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, once
allies of Erdogan from his AK Party who have emerged as potential political
opponents, said on Twitter the dismissals were out of line with democracy.

The removal of
the mayors echoed the dismissal of dozens of mayors in 2016 over similar
accusations, part of a purge that began after a failed coup. Nearly 100 mayors
and thousands of party members were jailed in a crackdown that drew expressions
of concern from the United States and European Union. Erdogan warned before the
March elections that HDP mayors could again be dismissed if they, like their
predecessors, were deemed to have ties to militants.

Erdogan
frequently accuses the HDP of links to the PKK, which is designated a terrorist
group by Turkey, the EU and the United States. The HDP denies such links. The
PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000
people have been killed in the conflict. The Interior Ministry said recent
operations had led to PKK militant numbers falling to their lowest level in 30
years, with the number of fighters in Turkey falling to some 600 from around
1,800-2,000 in the past.

Announcing the
new operation against PKK militants, launched on Sunday in the provinces of
Van, Sirnak and Hakkari, the ministry published images showing security forces
firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The security forces destroyed
43 caves and shelters used by the PKK, the ministry said, adding that
operations would continue until all militants in the areas were
"neutralized". - Reuters