The Turkish Ministry of the Interior has initiated legal action against the DEM Party Co-chair Tuncer Bakırhan over a speech he gave in Mardin on Monday.

According to the statement by the Ministry of the Interior, Mehmet Mihdi Tunç, the DEM Party Mardin provincial co-chair, is also being investigated for a statement made in connection with the removal of Kurdish mayors from office.

The co-mayors of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti municipalities of the DEM Party were suspended by the Turkish Ministry of the Interior on Monday on alleged terror charges and replaced by administrators. Last week, Ahmet Özer, the mayor of the Esenyurt district of Istanbul, a Kurdish CHP politician and renowned scientist, was dismissed from office and imprisoned on alleged links to the PKK.

Since the beginning of the week, there have been widespread protests against the suspension of the right to elect and be elected for Turkey's Kurdish population. Police have been using force against the protests, and numerous people have been taken into custody.

Tuncer Bakırhan said in his speech in Mardin on Monday that the Kurdish people would not bow down, and pointed to the long tradition of resistance and previous uprisings in Kurdistan. “Neither their trustees nor their policy of oppression, their lies and their tricks will bring us to our knees,” said the 54-year-old politician, alluding to Seyid Roza, the leader of the Alevi-Kurdish resistance in Dersim who was executed in 1937.

A smear campaign against Bakırhan was launched in the Turkish media and virtual networks. The DEM Party issued a statement saying that the remarks of its co-chair regarding Kurdish rebel leaders Sheikh Said and Seyid Rıza had been distorted: “The words of our co-chair Tuncer Bakırhan are extremely clear and unambiguous. The speech refers to historical memory and criticises the methods used to make a solution to the Kurdish question impossible. While our communities are exposed to a trustee coup on the one hand, we are confronted with organised political lynching on the other. We know that the source of both attacks is the same. You cannot legitimise the trustees with political lynching and distortions.”