After the arrest of co-mayor Cihan Karaman, a trustee was appointed to Hakkari Municipality. The first visible action of the trustee was to close the municipality to the people and actually turn it into a police station.

The city had already gone through a rapid decline in 2016, when again the AKP appointed a trustee replacing the HDP mayors.

In a short period of two years, the debt of the municipality rose. Between 2016 and 2019, the Hakkari trustee stopped all services to the population.

The HDP won once again in Hakkari at the 31 March local elections: it got 60% of the votes. 

The HDP showed and practiced a transparent example of municipalism with its public meetings and all decisions discussed and taken together with the population.

Services were made in line with the wishes and opinions of the people. The municipality solved the water problem by bringing water from the Berçelan Plateau some 20 km away from the city center.

As roads were built for neighborhoods without roads, almost all roads were paved. The city was modernized by pouring hot asphalt especially on all roads and ring roads in the city center. The garbage were being collected on a daily basis and not once a month as it happened during the trustee period. New parks and gardens were built in many neighborhoods.

All this changed tough, when HDP co-mayor, Cihan Karaman, was arrested on 15 October.  A trustee was appointed and Hakkari Municipality was once again transformed into a police station.

The trustees closed the municipality to the population marking a huge difference with the HDP-run municipality. 

People said that the trustee was afraid of them and turned the municipality into a police station.