Ahmet Turk

Ahmet Türk, 2015

Ahmet Türk (born July 2, 1942 in Derik , Mardin Province ) is a long-time Turkish politician of Kurdish origin and former Lord Mayor of the city of Mardin .

family

Ahmet Turk's father Hacı Sinan was a lumberjack and was in the service of his future father-in-law and feudal lord Hüseyin Kanco, who was a commander of the Hamidiyereiterei . He bequeathed all of his fortune and the leadership of the Hacı Sinan tribe on the condition that the latter had to marry his eldest daughter, Türkiye. With the enactment of the naming law in Turkey in 1934, the family took the surname Türk . Ahmet Türk is the child of Hacı Sinan's second wife. He lost his father when he was ten years old. His older brother was a member of the Justice Party and was later murdered. At the age of 31, Ahmet Türk took over the management of his Eşiret , whose name is Kanco.

Political career

Ahmet Türk had his date of birth changed from 1946 to 1942 for the 1973 parliamentary elections in order to be able to run for office. In 1973 he became a member of the Mardin Democrat Party . He broke off his studies at the business school in Ankara in the last semester and entered the Turkish Parliament in 1977 as a member of the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP for short) . In the following election in 1979 his mandate was confirmed. After the military coup in 1980 , he was imprisoned in the infamous Diyarbakır prison for 22 months and, like many other politically active Kurds at the time, was tortured. He was banned from any political activity until 1986. After another prison sentence, he ran for the social democrat Halkçı Parti in 1987 and came back to parliament as a Mardin deputy. However, in 1989, Türk was excluded from the SHP with 10 other Kurdish colleagues because they had participated in an independent Kurdistan conference of the Kurdish Institute in Paris .

He then took part in the development of Halkın Emek Partisi (HEP), which was founded on June 7, 1990 and temporarily took over the chairmanship of the HEP. In 1991, Türk and the HEP entered parliament in an electoral alliance with the SHP. In 1994, however, he was arrested with other Kurdish MPs such as Leyla Zana , Hatip Dicle or Orhan Doğan and spent 22 months in prison. In the following years, Türk held important positions in HADEP and DEHAP .

On October 25, 2005, the delegates of the Democracy Toplum Partisi elected him together with Aysel Tuğluk as chairman. In February 2007 he was confirmed as party chairman. On March 6, 2007, he was sentenced to 6 months in prison by the Diyarbakir District Court for using the salutation "Dear Ocalan" ( Sayın Ocalan ). In Turkey, this violates Section 215/1 of the Criminal Code. This paragraph makes praising offenses and offenders a punishable offense. For the early parliamentary elections in July 2007 , Türk entered the race as an independent candidate. For this he had resigned from the party pro forma. The DTP sent its members for election as "independent" candidates in order to circumvent the 10% hurdle criticized by the EU. Ahmet Türk was elected MP in his home town of Mardin and moved back into parliament. When the DTP was banned by the Turkish Constitutional Court on December 11, 2009 and the ban on political activity imposed on him, his political career ended for the time being. But after the constitutional changes with the 2010 referendum , he returned to politics and ran for the Mardin province in the parliamentary elections on June 12, 2011 . He was elected and returned to parliament, where he remained non-attached. In the local elections in 2014 , he successfully ran for the metropolitan commune of Mardin and resigned his mandate as a result. Together with the only Christian mayor of Turkey Februniye Akyol, Ahmet Türk administered Mardin.

In the course of the measures following the failed coup in Turkey in 2016 , many Kurdish politicians were suspended and / or arrested for allegedly supporting the banned PKK . Ahmet Türk was suspended from work with the mayor of Artuklu in Mardin on November 17, 2016. He was arrested on November 21 and handed over to the Silivri Istanbul court on November 24 .

Kurdish language in the parliament building

On February 24, 2009, Ahmet Türk gave a speech in Kurdish to his parliamentary group . The state television interrupted the transmission. Later on, Ahmet Türk was appointed based on Art. 81 lit. c) charged with Law No. 2820. The law only allows political parties to use the Turkish language. Türk defended himself with the following words:

"If a state television program broadcasts in Kurdish and Prime Minister Erdogan says Kurdish sentences during his election campaigns in the southeast of the country, why are we not allowed to speak Kurdish?"

In April 2009 the court ruled that Kurdish was not forbidden in parliament, as speeches in parliament should not be viewed as election propaganda speeches. In addition, the use of a language other than Turkish is not explicitly prohibited in the house rules of Parliament.

Most recently, the Turkish politician of Kurdish descent Leyla Zana supplemented her oath of office in the Turkish parliament in the Kurdish language and was imprisoned for ten years.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Court arrests former Mardin mayor Ahmet Türk , report from www.hurriyetdailynews.com from November 25, 2016
2. ↑ Law No. 2820 of April 22, 1983 on political parties, RG No. 18027 of April 24, 1983; German translation by Ernst E. Hirsch in: Yearbook of Public Law of the Present (New Series). Vol. 13, Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1983, p. 595 ff.
3. ↑ taz.de: Kurdish causes a scandal , accessed on February 25, 2009.
4. ↑ Kürtçe konuşmaya yeşil ışık Article of the Milliyet of April 16, 2009 (Turkish)
5. ↑ derwesten.de: “Brotherhood of Languages” is far away , accessed on February 25, 2009.

Web links

• Important data on Ahmet Türk on the website of the Turkish Parliament