The special forces in Turkey were on the hot trail to catch the criminal, the co-mayor in the village of Catak in Wan province. She was a potential criminal with possibility of committing a crime. The crime being implementing a more democratic rule in a country ruled by dictatorship.

The pro-Kurdish party HDP, also one of the most progressive, left wing electoral parties in Turkey had earlier implemented a democratic rule to promote women and implement wider democracy to bring a woman as co-mayor in every municipality of local government they had won. Bringing women to bear the responsibility of every local government and asking the local residents to participate in the affairs of running a town or a village did not bode well with the Turkish authorities.

Turkey has not had the chance of a democratic rule since its inception in 1920’s. Dictatorship, fascism, military rule has always been the way the ruling classes governed the country.

Bringing women into the ruling bureaucracy, especially in the most patriarchal, feudalistic and religious areas in Kurdistan rubbed quite a few central government figures the wrong way.

When HDP took this experimentation with democracy one more step further the government and the state decided it was time to step in.

To indulge the population in an open, non-corrupt, participatory way in the day-to-day running of their towns, was waving a red flag in the face of traditional state structure of Turkey. And this is what the HDP and its local governments did in a new way to experiment with democracy they called “self-rule.” Turkish government, however, sees this as an open insurrection against its basic principles of One State, One Language, One Religion, One Leader, One Country, and One Nation. Of course, Kurds do not fit into the One Nation, One Language principle when they exert their identity and language of several thousand years as Kurds and Kurdish instead of being forced to act and be like Turks or to speak Kurdish.

Earlier this year, Turkey had started an assault on all co-mayors and had arrested a large number of women co-mayors with ridiculous charges. HDP even joked about this saying there were no women left in the local governments because the AKP government had arrested them all.

The last attack against democracy in Turkey comes with the Turkish state attack against Evin Keve, the female co-mayor of Catak local government. However, the ridiculous reason for her arrest exemplifies the level of illegality Turkey is committing, in its quest to stifle any initiative for democracy. Ms. Keve was arrested by the Turkish forces yesterday for “having the potential to declare self-rule.” She had not committed any crime; she had not broken any laws. However, the Turkish government assessed her as a “potential” criminal in case she would go ahead and someday ask her residents to participate in the running of the town. In a dictatorship, nothing is scarier than a women co-mayor asking to be transparent, clear, open and accountable, with people participating in the decisions.

The Turkish police raided Evin Keve’s house in Catak, which is a town in the Wan region, mostly populated by the Kurds. She was then taken to the courthouse where the prosecutor demanded her arrest for this heinous crime of experimenting with democracy. The prosecutor showed intent by providing a speech Keve had given earlier to her constituents that –according to the government appointed prosecutor- could be understood as “jeopardizing the unity of the state and the country.” Keve was then arrested and taken to Wan M-type closed penitentiary.

Sendika.Org News (Mehmet Bayram)