Ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) mayoral candidate Hüseyin Beyoğlu has applied to the Supreme Election Board (YSK) for the mandate to govern, even though he came in second in last week’s local election, because mayor-elect Zeyyat Ceylan is a purged teacher, the Diken news website reported on Sunday.
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayor-elect Ceylan garnered over 70 percent of the vote in Diyarbakır’s Bağlar district.
He was a teacher when the Turkish government dismissed him with a decree during a two-year-long state of emergency declared after a 2016 failed coup.
According to Beyoğlu, if a person was dismissed from a public job due to “security concerns,” as was cited in the decree, he must not be allowed to return to public duty.
Turkey fired some 140,000 civil servants during the state of emergency.