Local elections will be held in Turkey on 31 March and the DEM Party (Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party) is campaigning for a return to democratic principles. In most Kurdish municipalities, the right to vote and stand for election has effectively been abolished because the elected mayors have been deposed and replaced by trustees by the Turkish Ministry of the Interior since 2016.

The DEM Party organized a rally in Van on Friday. The crowd at the rally was huge, with many people unable to fit into the square. The mayoral candidates Neslihan Şedal and Abdullah Zeydan, who served more than five years in prison as an HDP deputy, took to the stage together with the candidates from the districts and were greeted with great applause.

Addressing tens of thousands at the rally in Van, DEM Party Co-Chair Tuncer Bakırhan called on the people to show the red card to the system of trustees.

Tuncer Bakirhan stated that his party wanted to win back all 14 municipalities in the province and its districts on Sunday. He remarked that the state has been trying in vain for forty years to intimidate the Kurdish people by means of repression, arrests, extrajudicial executions, the destruction of thousands of villages and the militarisation of rural areas. He said that the crowd on the square in Van is a clear sign that this policy has failed.

Bakırhan continued: “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said yesterday that 'Kurds have seen happiness and freedom thanks to us'. For God's sake, put your hands on your conscience, have we been able to sleep comfortably for a single day for 22 years? Have we been free for a single day? Have we forgotten Kemal Kurkut? Have we forgotten Osman Şiban, Servet Turgut? Have we forgotten Mother Taybet? Have we forgotten 10 years of trustees appointed to the will of the Kurdish people? 75-year-old Hatice Yıldız was sent to prison on a stretcher in her sick bed because she sent money to her daughter and her friends. Is this happiness? Is this freedom? Be sure that the Kurdish people, the peoples of Turkey, have neither been happy nor free with you for 22 years. The people of Turkey will show a red card to this cruel order, this fascist mentality, this trustee mentality with their votes on 31 March and will taste happiness and freedom to some extent.”

"The Kurds have always been open to dialogue. If they had been recognised as brothers and sisters, Turkey could now be the most developed country in the Middle East. Instead, the country's economy and future have been ruined just so that the Kurds do not speak their mother tongue," said Bakirhan, calling on the government to abandon its policies that deny and ignore the Kurdish people and to adopt a serious and sincere approach to a political solution to the Kurdish question.

Bakırhan stated that: “Mr Erdoğan, we have seen many presidents who did not solve the Kurdish question. We have seen many prime ministers. We have seen many bureaucrats. What happened to them? They dissolved, finished, sunk. Any party that does not solve the Kurdish question will never, ever succeed. As long as you approach the Kurdish question in this way, first in the local elections on 31 March and then in the first elections to be held, you will see the bottom, you will sink, you will end. What did the millions in the Newroz squares say with one heart and one voice? They said that the Kurdish question should be solved. Pointing to İmralı as the address for s solution to the Kurdish question, they said 'Mr Öcalan is the interlocutor of the Kurdish question’. Now, again, we say from here that this will of the Kurdish people, expressed by millions in the Newroz fields, is righteous. We are with you; we think the same thing. Instead of war, instead of operations, instead of cannons, instead of rifles, there is the İmralı Island, there is Mr Öcalan, so as not to waste the resources of this country. We are calling for a solution to the Kurdish question through dialogue and negotiations, by listening to what the Kurdish people say."