Government appointees leave new mayors in Turkey’s southeast with crippling debt

by Dicle Eşiyok

"Government-appointed administrators refused to hand municipalities to the newly elected mayors without taking nearly everything they could. The result is a mountain of debt so vast that HDP politicians suspect a plot to prevent them from running the municipalities.

Van province in eastern of Turkey was one of the HDP administrations taken over by government appointees in 2016 after fighting broke out between Kurdish militias and security forces. In three years of control by government appointees, HDP officials said debt in Van had ballooned from around 380 million lira to 1,240 billion lira ($208 million).

The debt in the larger Mardin Metropolitan Municipality is so high that the city’s new co-chair, Ahmet Türk, believes it was accrued intentionally as an obstacle for the incoming HDP administration.

“They’ve left the municipality in such a state it’s as if they wanted to leave us unable to do anything, and to provoke a reaction from the public,” Türk said."

Read the full article at Ahval.