The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) announced on Monday that they would not field candidates for the March 31 mayoral elections in the metropolitan cities of İstanbul, Adana and İzmir.
The announcement came from party spokesperson Hakkı Saruhan Oluç following reports in the Turkish media that HDP would not nominate candidates in seven major cities.
The move is considered among pundits to be an effort to prevent a win for the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and tacit support for opposition parties.
Oluç also claimed that the minister of interior was acting like a political partisan instead of a minister.