The authorities wanted to refuse the certificate
Pro-Kurdish politician becomes mayor after protests
April 3, 2024, 8:23 p.m
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In the election for mayor in Van, eastern Turkey, Abdullah Zeydan secured the majority of votes – but the electoral authority initially did not want to appoint him mayor. Several citizens are protesting against this and his Dem party is objecting. The authority is now giving in to this.
After protests against the exclusion of a pro-Kurdish politician from his mayoralty, Turkey’s supreme electoral authority has revised the decision. The authority has given the politician from the pro-Kurdish Dem party, Abdullah Zeydan, the mandate for the mayor’s office in the eastern Turkish city of Van, thereby upholding his party’s objection, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
Zeydan was elected mayor on Sunday in the Turkish local elections in Van with 55 percent of the vote. However, according to his party, he was initially refused the certificate of appointment.
The local electoral authority justified its decision by saying that Zeydan had a criminal record and therefore should not have stood for election, the state news agency Anadolu reported. The electoral authorities had approved Zeydan as a candidate weeks ago.
Incident was reminiscent of local elections in 2019
Instead of Zeydan, the second-place candidate from the AKP, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party, should be appointed mayor. According to preliminary results, this only reached around 27 percent in Van. The Dem party, for which Zeydan ran, objected to the decision.
People protested against the decision in many Turkish cities, also because the incident was reminiscent of the dismissals of pro-Kurdish local politicians in the past. In the 2019 local elections, the pro-Kurdish party under the name HDP won 65 mayoral positions – but the government in Ankara had the majority of politicians removed from office due to terrorism allegations and replaced by receivers.