Over the past two days, some eastern provinces have seen a repeat of riots associated with the PKK terrorist group's violent past. Rioters took to the streets, setting fires and clashing with police. Their demand was reinstatement of Abdullah Zeydan, who won Sunday’s mayoral election in the eastern province of Van. The local electoral board annulled Zeydan’s win, citing his past criminal record. In the name of protesting the decision, supporters of the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), took to the streets.
Police intervened in the first instance of riots in Van on Monday. Supporters of the YSP also took to the streets elsewhere, from Hakkari to Istanbul, to protest the decision. Again, security forces moved to halt the unauthorized protests. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a social media post on Wednesday that 89 suspects were detained in six cities following Tuesday’s riots. Yerlikaya said the suspects violated assembly regulations, chanted slogans in support of the PKK and hurled stones at security forces. He noted the detentions were in Van, Hakkari, Siirt, Batman and Şırnak in the southeast and the western city of Izmir. Except for Şırnak, all southeastern provinces were places where the YSP won municipal elections on Sunday.
Zeydan had garnered over 55% of the vote in Van, which lies on Lake Van around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Türkiye's eastern border with Iran. After he was ruled ineligible, the next candidate who won the most votes, ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate Abdülahad Arvas, was declared the winner of the election.
The YSP said Wednesday it was contesting the ruling.
"We made our objection to the Supreme Election Board canceling the candidacy of our Van Mayor Abdullah Zeydan and giving the mandate to the AKP candidate," the YSP said in a statement.
The party’s officials have openly encouraged their supporters to take to the streets, long before they made their formal appeal to the electoral board’s ruling. The ruling followed a last-minute reversal of a court verdict that had restored his right to stand for election. Zeydan, who had been elected lawmaker on an HDP ticket in 2015, was arrested one year later. He was charged with terrorist propaganda and aiding and abetting the PKK and sentenced to eight years in prison. Zeydan is known for his notorious remark, “The PKK could suffocate Türkiye just with its spit," which he uttered in a rally before his imprisonment. His sentence issued by a local court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır was overturned by a higher court. After a lengthy legal process during which he was held in custody, Zeydan was released but had a political ban. A court later lifted the ban but prosecutors appealed the verdict, shortly before the municipal election. A lower court sided with the prosecutor’s office and reimposed the political ban.
AK Party spokesperson Ömer Çelik said the issue was at the discretion of the regional election commission, not the government in Ankara.
"If (the party) wants to appeal the decision, the mechanisms for that are clear," he told reporters after the party's central executive committee meeting on Tuesday. "Democratic protest is everyone's right. There is no place for turning it into a violent incident or attacking the police," he said.
In Sunday's municipal elections, the YSP made a strong comeback in the southeast and eastern Türkiye, taking back the municipalities it lost after the 2019 elections due to the appointment of trustees. The government installed trustees in YSP-run municipalities when dozens among them were found engaged in activities in support of the PKK.
