Following the arrests of Amed Metropolitan Municipality Co-mayors Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı, the people protesting the appointed trustee gathered in front of the municipality building today as well. HDP Amed MPs Nursel Aydoğan, Feleknas Uca and Sibel Yiğitalp, municipality workers and a large crowd attended the protest and Aydoğan gave a brief speech.

Aydoğan underlined that the AKP government wanted to dismiss the struggle for peace and confiscated the Amed Metropolitan Municipality by force and state power, and said: “This is confiscating the will of the people, this is usurpation. The ruling party calls for elections, calls for the ballot, then confiscates by force what they can’t achieve by election. The preparations had been made a long time ago. The press is shut down, there is no free press left in this country. It wasn’t enough, they shut down the radios people listened to at work or at home. Then, lastly they committed an act that made thousands of people suffer, they shut off the internet for days. All businesses, hospitals and pharmacies were unable to work. By shutting off the Internet, they wanted to prevent the world from hearing about what happened in Diyarbakır. But it didn’t go as they planned. The people of Diyarbakır managed to declare to the whole country what happened here.”

HDP MP said the trustee started working as of yesterday. She said he visited shopkeepers as his first act, but that he shouldn’t “get an idea that he was accepted [there].” Aydoğan continued: “The people of Diyarbakır is a politicised folk. They know very well who to protect. Will they consider the trustee their mayor, or will they consider the unjustly arrested co-mayors they elected? The choice here is clear. The people of Amed is not a people to be tricked by free public transportation. There is only one thing the people of Diyarbakır expect, and it’s that the AKP turn back from this historic mistake. Other than this, the people of Diyarbakır have no demands. If this doesn’t happen, what is needed is an election. Let them bring the ballot here, and they will see who the people of Diyarbakır prefer. Or, the people of Diyarbakır won’t recognize the trustee. Our call to the people is: Don’t use the services provided by the trustee. Don’t go to the municipalities. The people of Diyarbakır will assert their will under any conditions. The trustee appointed here will continue to spend his days drinking tea in his room. He should continue to drink tea.”