Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday threatened the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) with appointing trustees to municipalities run by their mayors if the HDP sends government aid to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkey in recent years has removed mayors in the Kurdish-dominated Southeast elected from the HDP on allegations of terrorist support and replaced them with government-appointed trustees. After the HDP vowed to take back these municipalities in the March 31 local elections, Erdoğan threatened the HDP, saying “If you send government funds to ‘Qandil’ [a reference to the military headquarters of the PKK in northern Iraq], we will start appointing trustees again.”
Erdoğan’s remarks came during a rally in the nationalist province of Yozgat after he had the crowd watch speeches by HDP politicians in an effort to attract nationalist votes.