Flanked by a Turkish flag, the portrait of Islamo-nationalist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan caps each of the poles of the main avenue of the town of Batman, 450,000 inhabitants, in the heart of Kurdish country. A landscape common to many cities in Turkey except that here, in the east of the country, the president’s party only received 12% of the votes in the municipal elections of March 2024. don’t worry, he has been in charge again since November 4: the prefect of the region, committed to the cause of power, was appointed military man in place of mayor Gülistan Sönük, although elected with 64% of the votes.
Like seven other Kurdish mayors in the country, the councilor was removed from office and replaced by the Turkish authorities, on the grounds that she would be targeted by a trial for “membership in a terrorist organization”, the Kurdish guerrilla of the PKK. “As soon as they took possession of the town hall, they removed our signs in the Kurdish language, closed the Kurdish daycare center that we had just opened and replaced the women with men,” laments the former mayor, 31 years old. . Unlike other elected officials, however, Gülistan Sönük was not thrown in prison.
Increased repression against all protesters
As soon as this replacement of authority was announced, residents gathered in front of the town hall to protest. “Since the appointment, more than 300 people have been arrested for demonstrating, 37 of them are in pre-trial detention, the others are awaiting trial,” explains Ahmet Sirray, lawyer and member of the IHD, the main human rights association. the Man in Turkey. The police beat people while arresting them, then in the police vans… Some trips that should have lasted half an hour took two hours, so that they could beat my clients more, while that they broadcast songs from the Turkish extreme right.”
Mustapha Erol, 44, is one of the diehard local activists of the Kurdish cause. Many of them lost their lives, especially in the 1990s, when Hizbullah, a Kurdish jihadist group supported by the Turkish secret services, kidnapped or murdered people suspected of being close to the PKK in the street. Photos of the dead and missing adorn the offices of Batman’s pro-Kurdish party, the DEM, while Hizbullah has completed its transformation into a legal political party, Hüda-par, allied to Erdogan. Mustafa spent eight years in prison, just like the majority of his brothers, one of whom is still wanted by the police and another who obtained political asylum in Germany. His father was a municipal councilor until the arrival of the state “guardian”.
Among the demonstrators hostile to the Turkish prefectural “guardian” was one of his brothers, Medeni, 37 years old. Recognized as mentally handicapped with a disability rate of 70%, he threw a stone “which did not travel 5 meters and did not hit anyone”, explains Mustafa. But security cameras recorded his action and, three days after the incident, anti-terrorist police broke down the door of his family’s home, in a modest neighborhood in the south of the city. “They targeted my parents, tackled them to the ground, then headed towards the living room where my brother was sleeping… There, they handcuffed him, laid him on the ground before threatening him with death, beating him then unleashed two dogs on him,” says Mustafa. One of the bites, to the throat, required twelve stitches. Treated in hospital, Medeni has since been placed under home detention, even though his disability normally makes him criminally irresponsible, laments Mustapha. A month later, the town hall, surrounded by police armored vehicles and uniformed soldiers, took on the appearance of a barracks. But calm seems to reign over Batman again.
The astonishing call for peace from the Turkish far right
This is the third time since 2017 that “guardians” of this type have been appointed to take care of Kurdish towns in Türkiye. But this time, the political climate is different. At the end of October, the leader of the Turkish far right and indispensable ally of Erdogan, Devlet Bahçeli, called, to everyone’s surprise, for peace negotiations with the Kurdish guerrillas, going so far as to promise the release of the founder of the PKK , Abdullah Öcalan, arrested in 1999 and since imprisoned on the prison island of Imrali, in the Sea of Marmara. “He just has to come to this Parliament and pronounce the dissolution of the terrorist organization,” invited the far-right leader.
Peace negotiations have already been held between the Turkish state and the Kurdish guerrillas in the past. The last ones were around ten years ago. But today, the main causes of the talks are to be found in regional geopolitics, explains academic Mesut Yegen, a specialist in the Kurdish question. “Since October 7, 2023, Israel has inflicted significant setbacks on Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah, underlines the academic. The opportunity for Turkey to take advantage of the vacuum left by the regional withdrawal of Iran to advance its pawns in Iraq as in Syria.”
In Syria, an offensive by pro-Turkish mercenaries in the north
But to hope to extend its influence in the long term, Ankara must resolve the Kurdish question, while the Turkish army is unable to dislodge the PKK from the Iraqi mountains and northern Syria is controlled by the Syrian democratic forces, very close to it. of the PKK, who defeated the Islamic State there. “Turkey anticipated that the cards were being reshuffled, and it was right since the reduction of the Iranian presence, the Russian air force and Lebanese Hezbollah in northwest Syria allowed the rebels to to take Aleppo,” said Mesut Yegen.
Launched with the agreement of Turkey, the offensive by the Syrian Islamists of Hayat Tahrir el Cham (HTS) led to the collapse of the forces of Syrian dictator Bashar el-Assad and the fall of Aleppo on November 30. At the same time as this offensive, which is now continuing towards the south, Turkey has launched the mercenary brigades it controls to attack the positions held by the Kurds of the Syrian democratic forces north of Aleppo.
The pro-Turkish mercenaries thus seized the town of Tel Rifaat and its region, causing the Kurdish populations to flee: at least 100,000 people are said to have left for other regions held by the Kurds further east of the Syria. The offensive now continues against the town of Manbij, also held by the Kurds and their local Arab allies. “For the moment the Kurds are evacuating quickly, without fighting too much,” says Mesut Yegen. “It’s a way of sparing their troops, as if they were aware that they were not able to hold these areas in the context current.”
The advance of pro-Turkish troops against the Kurds in Syria could allow Ankara to enter a position of strength in negotiations with the founder of the PKK Abdullah Öcalan, while the appointments of “guardians” in town halls weaken the pro party -Kurdish from Turkey. But in Batman as elsewhere in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, despondency sometimes gives way to anger in the face of abuses against Kurdish civilians broadcast on social networks by mercenaries in the service of Ankara.
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