Turkiye unseats Kurdish mayors in crackdown after peace proposal

Update Turkiye unseats Kurdish mayors in crackdown after peace proposal
The dismissals come after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed full support for one of his political ally’s attempts to reach out to Turkiye’s Kurds. (File/AFP)
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Updated 04 November 2024
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Turkiye unseats Kurdish mayors in crackdown after peace proposal

Turkiye unseats Kurdish mayors in crackdown after peace proposal
  • Local governors replaced the mayors in the provincial centers of Mardin and Batman
  • All belonged to the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, which has 57 seats in the national parliament

ISTANBUL, Nov 4 : Turkiye dismissed the pro-Kurdish mayors of three southeastern cities on Monday for alleged ties to Kurdish militants, just two weeks after President Tayyip Erdogan’s main ally made a proposal for ending the militants’ 40-year insurgency in the southeast.
Turkiye’s interior ministry said it had replaced the mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party in the cities of Mardin, Batman and Halfeti with government-appointed administrators.
The move, which the ministry said targeted supporters of the outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), recalled past crackdowns on Kurdish politicians.
The DEM, the third largest party in Turkiye’s parliament, condemned the dismissals, saying they stood in sharp contradiction with the recent overture from Ankara that had pointed to a possible peace process in the southeast.
“It is a repetition of the bankrupt attacks that have been continuing since 1994 to eliminate the Kurdish people from democratic politics,” DEM said in a statement.
“While we were expecting a hand to be extended for a solution and peace, the will of the people was violated.”
The three dismissed mayors deny various charges against them and are appealing existing convictions. Dozens of pro-Kurdish mayors from DEM’s predecessor party were removed in the past from their posts on similar charges.
In June, the state
unseated a DEM mayor
in the southeast’s Hakkari province, two months after local elections where the party won 75 municipalities.
Last month Erdogan ally Devlet Bahceli, leader of Turkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), suggested that PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, jailed since 1999, come to parliament and announce the end of the conflict in southeast Turkiye and the PKK’s surrender in exchange for the possibility of his release.

CRACKDOWN ANNIVERSARY
The latest dismissals come on the anniversary of a
crackdown eight years ago
, when pro-Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, still jailed, and other top figures in his party were arrested.
It was the third time that Mardin’s mayor Ahmet Turk, 82, had been dismissed after being elected. He was one of many Kurdish politicians convicted in May for instigating large-scale protests in 2014.
Last week, a mayor from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was arrested after prosecutors accused him of membership of the PKK, designated as a terrorist group by NATO member Turkiye and its Western allies.
“The government has lost control and is wavering inconsistently,” Istanbul’s CHP Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, seen as a key potential rival to Erdogan, said on X.
After a peace process collapsed in 2015, the PKK conflict entered its bloodiest phase. Thousands of pro-Kurdish party members, including lawmakers, were jailed on militancy charges in an accompanying crackdown.
Kurds make up around a fifth of Turkiye’s population of 85 million. 


Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
Updated 2 sec ago
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Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
  • Strikes hit the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon
BEIRUT: Israeli strikes early on Friday hit two border crossings linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said.
The strikes hit just across the border on the Syrian side of both the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon, Hamieh said.
Both crossings are important access points to Syria’s Homs province, where anti-government rebels are seeking to advance against government forces after sweeping through northern Syria.

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
Updated 5 min 57 sec ago
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Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
  • Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches

MANAMA, Bahrain: Iran said Friday it conducted a successful space launch, the latest for its program the West alleges improves Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches. The launch took place at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport in rural Semnan province.
There was no immediate independent confirmation the launch was successful.
The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and as an uneasy ceasefire holds in Lebanon.


Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor

Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor
Updated 06 December 2024
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Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor

Strikes on key bridge linking Syria’s Homs, Hama: war monitor
  • Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday

BEIRUT: Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday, as government forces scramble to secure Homs after Islamist-led militants captured Hama and commercial hub Aleppo.
“Fighter jets executed several airstrikes, targeting Al-Rastan bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway... as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut off the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive a little more than a week ago, just as a ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah.
To slow the militants advance, the Observatory said Assad’s forces erected soil barriers on the highway north of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.
Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Homs on Thursday, for fear that the militants would keep up their advance, the Observatory said earlier.
The militants captured Hama on Thursday following street battles with government forces, announcing “the complete liberation of the city” in a message on their Telegram channel.
Militant fighters kissed the ground and let off volleys of celebratory gunfire as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.
Many residents turned out to welcome the militants. An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall.
The army admitted losing control of the city, strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.
Defense Minister Ali Abbas insisted that the army’s withdrawal was a “temporary tactical measure.”
“Our forces are still in the vicinity,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.


Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama “a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government” because the army should have had an advantage there to reverse militants gains “and they couldn’t do it.”
He said HTS would now try to push on toward Homs, where many residents were already leaving on Thursday.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community.
He said tens of thousands were heading toward areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where the Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, form the majority.
“We are afraid and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said a civil servant, who gave his name only as Abbas.
“We fear they (the militants) will take revenge on us,” the 33-year-old said.
Until last week, the war in Syria had been mostly dormant for years, but analysts have said it was bound to resume as it was never truly resolved.
In a video posted online, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said his fighters had entered Hama to “cleanse the wound that has endured in Syria for 40 years,” referring to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, which led to thousands of deaths.
In a later message on Telegram congratulating “the people of Hama on their victory,” he used his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre for the first time.


The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed in the country since the violence erupted last week.
It marks the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.
Key to the militants’ successes since the start of the offensive last week was the takeover of Aleppo, which in more than a decade of war had never entirely fallen out of government hands.
While the advancing militants met little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.
Assad ordered a 50-percent raise in career soldiers’ pay, state news agency SANA reported Wednesday, as he seeks to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.
Militants drove back the Syrian armed forces despite the fact that the government sent in “large military convoys,” the Observatory said.
The militants launched their offensive in northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Both Hezbollah and Russia have been crucial backers of Assad’s government, but have been mired in their own conflicts in recent years.
HTS is rooted in Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch.
The group has sought to moderate its image in recent years, but experts say it faces a challenge convincing Western governments it has fully renounced hard-line jihadism.
The United States maintains hundreds of troops in eastern Syria as part of a coalition formed against Daesh group jihadists.


Israel FM says ‘may have opportunity’ for Gaza hostage deal

Israel FM says ‘may have opportunity’ for Gaza hostage deal
Updated 06 December 2024
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Israel FM says ‘may have opportunity’ for Gaza hostage deal

Israel FM says ‘may have opportunity’ for Gaza hostage deal

JERUSALEM: Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Thursday that Israel may have “an opportunity now” to secure a deal for the release of its hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Speaking in a video message from a meeting in Malta, he said: “We may have an opportunity now for a hostage deal. Israel is serious about reaching a hostage deal and I hope we can do this and do it as soon as possible.”


Palestinian security forces exchange gunfire with militants in West Bank

Palestinian security forces exchange gunfire with militants in West Bank
Updated 06 December 2024
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Palestinian security forces exchange gunfire with militants in West Bank

Palestinian security forces exchange gunfire with militants in West Bank

JENIN: Gunfights erupted in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank on Thursday between militants and Palestinian security forces following the theft of vehicles belonging to the Palestinian Authority, according to AFP journalists in the city.
The intense exchanges of fire began around 9:30 PM (1930 GMT) and followed the deployment of members of the security forces around the Jenin refugee camp, which is adjacent to the city and a stronghold for armed groups in the territory, according to the journalist.
Witnesses reported that the Palestinian security forces set up roadblocks on routes leaving the camp.
Tensions were running high in Jenin earlier in the day after a group of armed men seized two vehicles belonging to the PA and paraded through the streets waving Islamic Jihad flags.
In a statement, General Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the security forces, said “a group of outlaws opened fire on the headquarters of the security services” and stole two vehicles.
He said the security forces would “recover the vehicles and hold accountable anyone who committed this act.”
Tensions between the PA and armed groups appear to have been exacerbated by recent arrests by the security forces.
At a press conference inside Jenin camp, Mahmud Abu Talal, spokesman for a collective of local armed groups, said the PA had “abandoned its people in the most difficult circumstances.”
He rejected the label of outlaws and accused the PA of “carrying out a continuous operation to undermine those who protect their people.”
Jenin has long been a bastion of Palestinian armed groups and was the focus of a major Israeli raid launched at the end of August.
Violence in the West Bank, already increasing, surged after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
Israel has occupied the territory since 1967.