The governor appointed as trustee to the Municipality of Kars has dissolved the city council and the certificates of the council members have been declared invalid. The Kurdish language Twitter account of the former HDP administration has been closed.
Mezopotamya agency (MA) reported on Sunday that the city council of Kars was dissolved by order of the governor Türker Öksüz who took over the administration after the arrest of HDP’s democratically elected co-mayors; Ayhan Bilgen and Şevin Alaca. The city council consisted of 25 members from five factions, ten of the envoys belonged to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). It is said that their certificates have already been declared invalid. The tasks of provincial administration were transferred to the office of governor.
Türker Öksüz is the governor of Kars, a multi-ethnic region in the extreme northeast of the Turkish territory bordering Armenia and Georgia. After the arrest of HDP’s co-mayors, he was appointed trustee for the city hall. The former co-mayor Ayhan Bilgen was imprisoned on Friday. The day before, the other co-mayor, Şevin Alaca, was also arrested. The governor's appointment as trustee came only ten minutes after the announcement of the arrest warrant against Ayhan Bilgen. As a result, all HDP-ruled major cities in Turkey are now under trustee administration.
After moving into the city hall, Öksüz's first official act was to conduct Friday prayer under the protection of bodyguards. He then ordered the deletion of tweets with content on HDP projects on the Twitter account of the occupied city administration. The Kurdish language account was even completely closed.
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