Ahmet Türk is a Kurdish politician in Turkey and was born into a family of Kurdish clan and tribal chiefs in southeastern Turkey.
Political career
He was elected MP for the Democratic Party in 1973. Later he resigned and joined the Republican People`s Party. Following the military coup in 1980, he was removed from parliament, arrested and sent to Diyarbakir Prison for 22 months. After his release he was active in different left parties. In 1987 he was elected to parliament as a representative of Mardin on behalf of the Social Democratic Populist Party but got expelled from the party in 1989 for attending a Kurdish Conference in Brussels. Following he joined the newly founded Peoples Labor Party The SHP agreed again to an electoral alliance and in 1991 he was re-elected to parliament. He supported an eventual peace process between the Kurdistan Workers Party and the Turkish Government, and tin April 1993 he ravelled to Bar Elias, Lebanon to jointly with Jamal Talabani and Kemal Burkay attend a press conference where a unilateral ceasefire was announced by Abdullah Öcalan. In July 1993 the HEP was prohibited by the Constitutional Court, alleging the party was pursuing aims contrary to the indivisibility of Turkey. He joined the Democracy Party His and the immunity of five other DEP deputies was lifted in March 1994 and he was sent to prison for terror charges. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He appealed and was released on the 27 October 1995. Türk was the chairman of the former pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in Turkey and was a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. On 26 February 2007, as the acting president of the DTP, he was sentenced together with vice-president Sebahat Tuncel to 18 months imprisonment for having used the Kurdish language in a leaflet of the DTP women wing, for the International Women`s Day on 8 March. Then on 6 March 2007 he was convicted to 6 months imprisonment for calling Abdullah Öcalan "Mister", but the sentence was suspended. He was again elected MP to the Turkish Parliament for Mardin on the 22 July 2007. How ever on 11 December 2009, the Constitutional Court of Turkey voted to ban the DTP, accusing it of connection with the PKK. Türk was expelled from the Grand National Assembly, and he and 36 other party members were banned from joining any political party for five years. Türk appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and in 2016 Turkey was condemned to pay Türk 30`000€. In April 2010 he was attacked by İsmail Çelik who beat him and broke his nose. Çelik first received a prison sentence of 11 months and 20 days which was later changed into a fine of 7000 Turkish Liras.
Mayor of Mardin
In the 2014 local elections, Ahmet Türk was elected mayor of Mardin, associated with the Democratic Regions Party. However, on 21 November 2016 he was detained "on terror charges" after being dismissed from office by Turkish authorities, and a trustee appointed as mayor. He was released on the 3 February 2017. In the Turkish local elections 2019 he was re-elected as mayor of Mardin. In August 2019 he was dismissed again by the Interior Ministry due to accusations for supporting terrorism. The governor of Mardin was appointed as trustee. Türk was accused of having attended a funeral of member of the Peoples Protection Units in Mazidagi in 2015, but in February 2020, a court acquitted him from the charges.
Political views
He was also involved in the peace process between the Kurdistan Workers' Party and Turkish state and met Abdullah Öcalan together with Ayla Akat Ata in 2013. He has been described as "the most peaceful, most inclusive, most anti-violence, most moderate and wisest figure of the Kurdish political movement, and the one most likely to compromise." He has supported the celebration of Newroz, the Kurdish new year and in his aim to reconcile with the victims of the Genocide during World War I he has apologized to the Assyrian, Yazidi and Armenian population for the role of the Kurds in the genocide.
