The local elections in Turkey will be repeated tomorrow, Sunday, in the municipalities of Akpazar (Perî) in Dersim province and Hilvan (Curnê Reş) in Riha (Urfa) province.

In Akpazar, the CHP won on 31 March by four votes ahead of the AKP. Due to the AKP's objection, the elections must now be repeated. A Dersim alliance of the CHP and the DEM party is contesting the new election.

In Hilvan, the DEM party had a clear lead. While the AKP only received 30.71 percent of the votes despite electoral fraud, the DEM party was clearly ahead with 33.2 percent. When the result was announced, relatives of the AKP candidate stormed a polling station and burned the ballot boxes. This served as a pretext for the AKP to ask for the repetition of the elections.

The co-chair of the DEM party, Tuncer Bakırhan, said: "The people of Hilvan will give a clear answer on 2 June and prove once again where the Kurdish people stand."

The co-chair of the DEM party held a rally in the city together with MPs Ömer Öcalan, Pervin Buldan, Dilan Kunt Ayan and Sinan Çiftyürek and the candidates Serhan Paydaş and Garip Yeşil.

Visit to seasonal workers in cotton fields

Bakırhan and the delegation accompanying him also visited seasonal workers in the cotton fields and talked to them about their problems and the DEM party's approaches to combating the exploitation of seasonal workers.

“The new elections are in themselves wrong”

Bakırhan said: “Rest assured that on 2 June, the people of Hilvan will take back the municipality that was stolen from them. Now they [the AKP] are acting as if they have been serving Hilvan well for years, they are talking about real municipality. But their understanding of local government is corruption, irregularity and injustice. Profiteering, theft and corruption reign in the AKP administrations. There are no proper streets, no sidewalks, no water, no services in the town halls. The town halls that we took over from the trustees are so deeply mired in debt that we cannot pay it off even in a hundred years. There were no women, there were no services and there was no place for the poor and needy either. We will teach those who cheat us a lesson at the ballot box. The re-run of the elections alone is already unfair."