The Interior Ministry has appointed a trustee to the Kağızman district municipality in Kars province following the sentencing of Mayor Mehmet Alkan to 6 years and 3 months in prison for "being a member of a terrorist organization."
Okan Daştan, the district governor of Kağızman, was named as the new trustee, marking the latest in a series of government takeovers of opposition-led municipalities.
Kars district mayor given prison sentence on 'terrorism' charges
The decision was announced in the early house of today, with heavy police presence around the municipal building. Nejla Demir, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, condemned the move, stating, "The trustee policy imposed through a politicized judiciary is an act of usurpation, colonial law, and plunder. The midnight appointment of a trustee to our Kağızman Municipality with hundreds of police officers is a clear act of seizing public will and looting what belongs to the people."
Municipal takeovers
Since the 2024 local elections, 12 municipalities have been taken over by the government, including 10 run by the DEM Party and two by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). The first intervention came on June 4, when Hakkari Mayor Mehmet Sıddık Akış was removed from office due to terrorism charges.
The full list of municipalities taken over since the elections includes:
- DEM Party: Hakkari (Jun 3, 2024), Mardin, Batman, Halfeti (Nov 4, 2024), Dersim (Nov 22, 2024), Bahçesaray (Nov 29, 2024), Akdeniz (Jan 14, 2025), Siirt (Jan 29, 2025), Van (Feb 15, 2025), Kağızman (Feb 24, 2025)
- CHP: Esenyurt (Oct 31, 2024), Ovacık (Nov 22, 2024)
The DEM Party, which won 75 municipalities in the 2024 elections—including 11 cities—has now lost six of those cities to government-appointed trustees.
Under Turkish law, the Interior Ministry has the authority to suspend mayors under criminal investigation and appoint district governors or bureaucrats as acting mayors, effectively bypassing elected municipal councils. Trustees also have the power to dissolve municipal councils, which typically include members from multiple political parties.
This policy was widely implemented following the failed coup attempt in 2016, when the government took control of nearly all municipalities run by the DEM Party’s predecessor, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority regions. The HDP regained many of these municipalities in the 2019 elections, but the government once again removed most of its elected mayors in the following months, citing terrorism-related investigations. (VK)
