The S&D group in the European Parliament was surprised on Friday 12 April that mayors of the pro-Kurdish HDP party, elected in the 31 March elections, were deprived of their mandate and replaced by candidates from other parties in second place.
The S&D group therefore demanded, in a statement, that mandates be given to all elected mayors who had been dismissed from public office by decrees adopted by the government following the 2016 coup attempt.
According to Saruhan Oluç, spokesman for the HDP, quoted by Reuters, more than half of the party's elected mayors are still waiting to receive their mandate to take office.
“How is it possible that the High Electoral Council YSK has approved candidates to run in the first place, and then when elected, they are being replaced by another party’s candidate?” said Kati Piri (S&D, Netherlands), European Parliament rapporteur on Turkey. “This is very far from what we understand as democracy and respecting the results of elections”, she added.
And she warned, “If the Turkish authorities start arbitrarily depriving mayors of their mandate or not recognising the results of opposition party elections, this will also have consequences for future relations between the EU and Turkey.”
The AKP, President Erdogan's party, also announced on 9 April that it wanted a new election in Istanbul, a city it lost to the opposition CHP party. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)