The mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district on the European side was arrested as part of an investigation launched into his alleged membership in the PKK terrorist group.
District Mayor Ahmet Özer, who was the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate in the latest municipal elections, was arrested upon the discovery of concrete evidence, including communication records, physical tracking surveillance reports, banking transactions and continuous contact with high-level terrorists, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported Wednesday.
Authorities searched Özer’s house, office and vehicle, and seized documents regarding his appointment in the PKK’s so-called democratic autonomy project during a meeting with the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on the prison island Imrali. The said appointment is also mentioned in organizational documents seized from other PKK suspects and delivered to the PKK stronghold in northern Iraq’s Qandil region.
Prosecutors ordered Özer’s phone to be wiretapped, which revealed the mayor held phone calls with 694 suspects linked to the PKK, as well as Remzi Kartal, a senior PKK member wanted in the red category with whom he spoke 14 times, over the course of a decade.
CHP had come under fire during local elections for “covertly” cooperating with the pro-PKK People’s Democratic Party (HDP). In the case of Esenyurt, both parties had agreed on Özer as a joint candidate, as HDP refused to nominate a candidate for the district.
CHP Chairman Özgür Özel noted that the party’s Central Executive Board (MYK) would convene in the Esenyurt district regarding the mayor’s detention.
In a statement posted on his social media account, Özel said the party canceled a planned camp in Antalya on Nov. 1-3 to discuss the issue.
The PKK, which has waged its bloody terror campaign since 1984, exploited the Kurdish community to create a so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Türkiye.
Tens of thousands of people have already died in the conflict. The last attempt at peace failed in 2015 when the PKK resumed attacks during negotiations.
According to the International Crisis Group, the conflict has shifted from Türkiye to northern Iraq and northern Syria since 2019, after the Turkish military continued to push back PKK terrorists over and away from its borders, but the group still has operatives within the country.
