Turkey has extended the mandate of a state-appointed trustee running the southeastern city of Mardin, keeping the municipality under central government control despite a court acquittal of the elected mayor, whose removal had been justified by terrorism-related charges, the Birgün daily reported.
The interior ministry extended for two more months the mandate of Tuncay Akkoyun, the provincial governor appointed to run the municipality. Akkoyun replaced Ahmet Türk, a veteran Kurdish politician who won the mayoral race in the March 2024 local elections as the candidate of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
The decision means Mardin will continue to be governed by the trustee rather than its elected leadership, even though the legal case cited to justify the mayor’s removal has now concluded without a conviction, leaving no active court ruling that bars him from office.
Türk, 83, was removed from office by the interior ministry in November 2024, marking the third time he had been ousted as mayor. The ministry cited an ongoing trial at the Ankara 14th High Criminal Court as justification for the move, saying he was being prosecuted for “disseminating terrorist propaganda.”
The case stemmed from a speech Türk gave in the southeastern province of Siirt in March 2011, in which the prosecutors accused him of promoting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies. The trial began in 2022. Türk was acquitted of the charges in late October 2025.
Asked after the ruling whether he expected to return to office, Türk said, “We do not have such an expectation.”
Mardin, a city near Turkey’s border with Syria, has a predominantly Kurdish population and has repeatedly voted for pro-Kurdish parties in local elections. Türk, who has served multiple terms as mayor, was elected for a third time in the March 2024 elections.
Turkey has frequently replaced elected mayors in Kurdish-majority municipalities with government-appointed administrators, citing alleged links to terrorist groups. The practice expanded after a coup attempt in 2016 and has continued through subsequent election cycles.
Following the 2024 local elections, trustees were appointed to several municipalities won by the DEM Party, including in the southeastern provinces of Van, Hakkari, Siirt, Batman and Tunceli.
Ongoing peace talks with the PKK have raised the prospect of the reinstatement to office of the DEM Party mayors. However, the government has thus far not taken any steps to that effect.
