PodcastAKP official likens sacking Ankara mayor to touching 3,000 volts of electricity
An AKP official, who spoke on condition on anonymity, told Duvar that sacking Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş and appointing a trustee to replace him would be like touching 3,000 volts of electricity with bare hands. "The mayor was selected with 50 percent of the votes. This would be like touching 3,000 volts of electricity with bare hands. It would burn immediately," the official said.
Nergis Demirkaya/Duvar
Sacking the mayor of Turkish capital Ankara would be like touching 3,000 volts of electricity with bare hands, an official from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has said, as he commented on a recent debate concerning the city's mayor.
Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has been facing bribery allegations following a municipality decision to seal off the twin towers owned by former CHP deputy Sinan Aygün over violation of land rights.
Aygün filed a complaint against Yavaş, saying that he and his team asked for 25 million Turkish liras as bribes, while the mayor did the same over "aiding a terrorist organization and opposing the law on terrorism financing," prompting the Interior Ministry to assign an investigator to look into the claims.
The allegations stirred debate in the Turkish political scene, with the question of whether a trustee would be appointed to replace Yavaş being asked behind closed doors.
Sacking of mayors and replacing them with trustees is a common practice of the AKP government, although it was only applied to municipalities held by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey's southeast until last week when a trustee was appointed to a CHP municipality for the first time.
A trustee was appointed to replace İbrahim Burak Oğuz, who was the mayor of the Urla district of the western province of İzmir before being arrested on charges of being a follower of the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen's movement - a group designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an AKP official told Duvar that sacking the mayor of Urla is nowhere near doing the same in the capital Ankara, adding that the ruling party has been following the rift between Yavaş and Aygün closely.
"This is Ankara and not Urla. The mayor was selected with 50 percent of the votes. This would be like touching 3,000 volts of electricity with bare hands. It would burn immediately," the official told Duvar.
"Legally, the possibility of appointing a trustee to Ankara Municipality is zero. The decisions on trustees are not related to the judiciary, but to the investigations carried out by the Interior Ministry on terror. Here, there are accusations on bribery and misconduct," the official also said.
Saying that an investigation was launched into the allegations, the official noted that a permission for investigation would be asked from the Interior Ministry if there's a strong suspicion of a crime.
"You can't sack the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul over nothing. If a decision is made as a result of the judicial process and the person's mayorship gets annulled, then a new mayor is determined via carrying out elections in the municipal council," the official said.
The official also said that the AKP has decided to wait for the result of the judicial process between Aygün and Yavaş.