Hasan Basri Fırat, a former Kurdish mayor who was removed from office in 2016 and later left Turkey amid a government crackdown on Kurdish politicians, has died at the age of 72, the İlke TV news website reported.
He died at a hospital in the western German city of Wuppertal after undergoing heart surgery five days earlier and spending several days in intensive care.
Fırat was elected co-mayor of the Hınıs district in Erzurum in the March 2014 local elections on the ticket of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). He was detained in October 2015 on accusations of aiding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency and is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies. He was released pending trial two months later.
In September 2016 the Interior Ministry removed Fırat from office and appointed a trustee to run the municipality. Facing separate investigations, Fırat fled Turkey and was subsequently sentenced to 12 years in prison.
A grandson of Sheikh Said, who led a Kurdish uprising and was executed by Turkish authorities in 1925, Fırat had been active in Kurdish politics since the 1990s.
Fırat’s removal was part of a broader practice under which Turkish authorities have replaced elected mayors in Kurdish-majority municipalities with government-appointed administrators, citing alleged links to terrorist groups. Initially used mainly against municipalities governed by pro-Kurdish parties, the practice expanded following a coup attempt in 2016 and has continued through subsequent election cycles.
Since the 2024 local elections the practice has increasingly targeted municipalities run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Several municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), including in the southeastern provinces of Van, Hakkari, Siirt, Batman and Tunceli, have also been included under trustee administration.
Rights groups and opposition parties have criticized the practice for overriding voters’ choices and undermining local democracy.
