The historical Sur district is one of the places where the results of the 31 March local elections in Amed are most awaited. A trustee has been appointed to Sur Municipality three times so far. DEM Party co-mayor candidates Gulan Fatma Önkol and Adnan Orhan were selected in the primary elections.

Adnan Orhan was born in Amed Pasûr (Kulp) district in 1982. Orhan, a graduate of Anadolu University International Relations, grew up in a patriotic family. Their village was burned down in 1994, and then his father Selim, his uncle Hasan and his cousin Cengiz Orhan were forcibly disappeared in custody. They were later found in a mass grave. Orhan, who was displaced to Amed in 1994, worked as a human rights advocate at the Amed Branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) for years. Orhan left the municipality after quitting his job there when a trustee was appointed to Sur Municipality in 2019.

The people will decide

Orhan spoke to ANF about the dark times under the trustee and said: "The language, culture, social, women's and children's areas have been seriously narrowed down by the trustee. I could see this very well. That's why I wanted to take responsibility. With the appointment of trustees in the last 8 years, many rights in the city have been usurped. Women, children and city people were ignored and subjected to oppression and cruelty. The trustee's understanding is not accepted by people and has caused a very serious reaction. The people do not want their will to be usurped again. When we go out canvassing, we see that the people are very optimistic. When we look at the resulting picture, it shows us that we all have a responsibility as individuals. We will put an end to this trustee mentality and give the word back to the people."

We will implement our policies

Orhan added: "Our party has a paradigm. We stated the democratic, ecological and women's liberation policies of our party when we set out on this path. We will fulfil the requirements of our party paradigm. What we said on the first day and what we will say in 5 years will not be different. Our words will be the same in our practices and our people will see this. We will run a people’s municipality. We will make all our decisions together with our people. The trustees have harassed the people and plundered Sur. Nothing is being done for the benefit of the people. We will run municipalities with a fully participatory democracy. We will make all our decisions together with our people."

A people’s municipality

Orhan continued: "The trustees have deleted Kurdish from all signs. Before the trustees, multilingualism was dominant in our municipalities. We reflected the diversity and pluralism of our people in our municipalities, but unfortunately the trustees only left Turkish as the sole language. We will try to keep the neighbourhood culture alive, especially in the Sûr district. They developed a serious special policy on this issue. They tried to end the neighbourhood culture by forcing the people living in the district to leave the place. More than 20 thousand people have had to leave Sûr in recent years. Sûr Municipality will be the municipality of the people."