Turkey’s electoral authorities on Tuesday denied the newly elected mayor from a pro-Kurdish political party the right to hold office in an eastern city and replaced him with his runner-up in the race — a candidate from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party.
Sunday’s local polls were a blow to Erdogan and his Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party after their wins last year in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The main opposition party retained its hold of Istanbul and the capital of Ankara and made huge gains elsewhere while the pro-Kurdish Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, won several municipalities in Turkey's mainly-Kurdish regions despite years of repression and thousands of political activists arrested.
