Ten suspects, including deputy mayors of Istanbul’s Ataşehir and Kartal districts, were referred to the court on Thursday after their detention earlier this week. Meanwhile, details of the investigation on their links to the terrorist group PKK were revealed by the media.
Investigators found Cemalettin Yüksel, who serves as deputy mayor of Kartal, had contacts with 313 PKK-linked suspects, while Livan Gür, deputy mayor of Ataşehir, had contact with 52 suspects.
Among the ten suspects detained on Tuesday were assembly members of Istanbul’s Üsküdar, Sancaktepe, Fatih, Tuzla, Adalar, Şişli and Beyoğlu municipalities.
Investigations revealed that Yüksel and Gür had contacts with eight suspects wanted for membership in PKK while eight other contacts were already jailed for PKK membership. All suspects were former members of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), while the municipalities they served were run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Authorities said the PKK had its members infiltrate metropolitan municipalities, and the suspects were working as members of the so-called People’s Democratic Congress. Each was given titles by the PKK as a “member of labor assembly,” “member of the women’s assembly,” “member of the general assembly,” etc.
The detentions were part of an investigation into “urban consensus” created by the DEM Party. The party, linked to PKK, has supported the opposition candidates, particularly those of CHP, in last year’s municipal elections in western cities where it had a slim chance of winning. It defined this thinly disguised alliance with the opposition as urban consensus, though this alignment was never made official. The “urban consensus” of the DEM Party was most apparent in Esenyurt, one of the most crowded districts of Istanbul, during the last municipal elections. The CHP, favored to win, withdrew its candidate first before replacing him with Ahmet Özer, a figure associated with the PKK figures. Özer won the election and was arrested last year for links to the terrorist group. Özer is accused of hiring PKK-linked names for the municipality.
