A-Infos (en) France, UCL press release, Türkiye: massive fraud to stifle Kurdish dissent (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

From the municipal elections of March 31, 2024, we will remember the 
rout of the AKP, the Islamo-conservative party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 
In the Kurdish regions under military occupation, massive fraud did not 
prevent the victory of the Dem Party, the main party of the Kurdish 
left. The Turkish state is now attacking the results of the election, 
and the population is taking to the streets. ---- At the national level, 
it is the CHP, the historic Kemalist party (center-left nationalist) 
which chased the AKP from many town halls. But in Bakur (Turkish 
Kurdistan), it is the People's Equality and Democracy Party (Dem Parti) 
which wins by winning ten provinces (compared to eight in 2019) and 82 
cities, or 16 more than in 2019. This victory should have been even 
greater, three provinces (Bitlis, Kars and Sirnak) having been lost due 
to electoral fraud orchestrated by the AKP government: thousands of 
soldiers were brought in convoys to vote (often several times) in the 
towns of Kurdistan acquired by the Dem Party. There, the pressure from 
the regime is the norm: armed police officers and soldiers near the 
voting booths, armored vehicles in the grounds of the schools where 
people vote, pressure to vote for AKP in exchange for a little money, or 
under the threat of losing one's job, etc.

All these soldiers are stationed in border communities due to the war in 
Iraqi Kurdistan, but their distribution is organized by the Turkish 
state to maintain constant pressure on all the Kurdish provinces.

In small and medium-sized towns, fraud is visible and uninhibited. When 
the European press congratulates itself on elections that "went well", 
it repeats the language of Erdogan's propaganda, making the situation in 
Kurdistan invisible. Council of Europe observers are almost absent; 
their delegation only went to Diyarbakir (Amed), where it was unable to 
observe the massive fraud that affected the rest of the country.

Victorious standoff around the symbolic city of Van
But cheating and intimidation did not prevent the opposition from 
winning. In Van, the AKP government tried to invalidate the election of 
Abdullah Zeydan as mayor, before giving up in the face of intense 
popular mobilization around this symbolic city of Kurdistan. The town 
hall will therefore remain with the Dem Party. The struggle paid off!

Protests broke out everywhere against the AKP's fraud and coup practices
Similar coup maneuvers were deployed in 2016 and 2019 to prevent the 
Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), predecessor of the Dem Party, from 
seizing town halls. To this day, the HDP co-mayors and municipal elected 
officials are still imprisoned. The State has therefore already, for 
eight years, confiscated democratically elected power.

The population is in the streets in many towns of Bakur to protest 
against this usurpation and thus obtained Erdogan's retreat. Many people 
were injured and arrested by the police.

The Turkish state's war against the Kurds, inside and outside its borders
In his speech on election night, Erdogan repeated his desire to "secure 
the border with Iraq before the summer" and to create a 30-kilometer 
"security corridor" in the territory of Rojava, along the border Syrian. 
He thus reaffirms his desire to intensify his war against the Kurds 
across borders.

Mobilization - locally as well as internationally - determines the 
balance of power that can be opposed to the AKP. The challenge is to 
stop the dismissal of the largely elected Dem Party mayors this Sunday!

Let's remain vigilant and mobilized, let's keep our eyes focused on 
what's happening in Kurdistan!

Long live the resistance of the Kurdish people! Bijî berxwedana Kurdistan!

Libertarian Communist Union, April 3, 2024

https://unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Turquie-des-fraudes-massives-pour-etouffer-la-dissidence-kurde
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