The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Agirî's Patnos (Panos) municipality co-mayors, Müşerref Geçer and Emrah Kılıç, and the municipality's Human Resources manager Uğur Laçin were arrested on 12 June, 3 days after being taken into custoyd on 9 June. Geçer, Kılıç and Laçin, who were tried for "bid rigging", were released after 3 months.

Background

HDP’s co-spokespersons for Foreign Affairs, Feleknas Uca and Hişyar Özsoy issued a statement to condemn the arrests of Patnos co-mayors, Ms. Müşerref Geçer and Mr. Emrah Kılıç, saying that they were arrested on "bogus charges."

There has been constant pressure against HDP municipalities and appointments of Turkish trustees to replace elected Kurdish mayors since 2016. After the 30 March 2014 local elections, HDP won 102 municipalities and trustees have been appointed to 95 of these municipalities and 93 co-mayors were arrested. In the local elections held on March 31, 2019, the HDP’s 65 candidates were elected as mayors.

Subsequently, the government denied six mayors their election for the certificate on totally unlawful grounds, deposed the majority of elected mayors and appointed trustees to 48 of these municipalities. The elected mayors were left in place only in six municipalities, including 4 districts and 2 towns. Patnos was one of the district municipalities where no trustees were appointed. Since August 2019, 83 co-mayors have been detained, and 39 mayors arrested. With the latest arrest of Patnos co-mayors, the number of detained and arrested co-mayors has increased to 85 and 41, respectively. The number of co-mayors who are still behind bars is 26, including also those arrested after 2016.