Kars Municipality Co-Mayor Ayhan Bilgen responded to Evrensel’s questions from jail: In such periods, the opposition, rather than the politics of tension through polemics, must promote discussion of its own alternative proposals for solution.
İnanç YILDIZ
Diyarbakır
Kars Municipality Co-Mayor Ayhan Bilgen was arrested within the operation dubbed the “Kobanê investigation” on 25 September and was placed in detention on 2 October. A trustee appointed in his place, Bilgen responded via his lawyers to Evrensel’s questions from Sincan High-Security Closed Penal Institution No 1. Bilgen said, “The opposition must quite manifestly enter into debate with the public over the programme for democracy, the law and economy that will give direction to the future and, to this end, each party must target a widening of its own base.”
Did you experience any kind of health-related problems during the arrest process? First of all, how’s your health? Are you and will you be able to access the necessary treatment?
I was taken with three of our cohort to hospital with the same complaint on the third day we had been taken to Ankara following arrest. Medication was prescribed after going on serum. Even though others from among our midst had similar complaints, they didn’t want to go to hospital out of Covid concerns. We had food-related intestinal infection, i.e. food poisoning. I was unable to take any cooked food for the subsequent four days. I pulled through consuming nothing but liquids. I didn’t take the medicine as it needed to be taken on a “full stomach.” Just now, my health is OK.
You have been arrested and detained once more over a matter on which the Constitutional Court awarded compensation due to lengthy detention in relation to your detention six years earlier due to the Kobanê actions. What is your take on this situation?
In my objection to detention submission, my lawyers also raised this point that I had likewise made in my statement at both the police and before the judge. The allegation of fresh evidence resting on charges based on the same offence does not change the nature of the offence. With talk of fresh evidence, I actually started undergoing re-prosecution in the case in which I was being prosecuted along with parliamentarians, but this time along with non-parliamentarian Central Executive Committee members. On the day I was re-detained, an adjournment until 16 February emerged from the ongoing hearing in Diyarbakır. Presented as fresh evidence are an informer who claims to have been involved in discussions unrelated to me, my social media messages and excerpts from my press statements. Which of this evidence could be tampered with? I went abroad many times following my release. Everyone knows I had no intention of fleeing any of those times. I’m neither going to clear out, nor lump the way things are here.
You were Kars’s elected mayor. A trustee was appointed the minute you’d been detained. The trustee’s first act was to perform prayer in front of the municipality. Of the HDP’s 65 municipalities, there remain four sub-provincial and two urban municipalities. How do you view an opposition party retaining virtually no municipalities?
There was no opportunity to follow the news for a long time over the period we were arrested and thereafter. With mayors ousted absent a decision concerning the municipality, what should happen is the election of a mayor by the assembly from among its number. Staging an operation against assembly members, too, and administration through a trustee has become part of the Turkish administrative system. The reason for this way of doing things is to make electees and the people pay the price for other quarrels.
While under arrest you published an explanatory text saying, “If a trustee is not appointed I will resign” and suggested that the municipal assembly elect a new mayor. In fact, you said this mayor could be a woman. Subsequently, the HDP assembly members were arrested. How do you view the denial of permission for five parties to reach understanding and elect a mayor? Meanwhile, the municipal assembly has been dissolved with the appointing of a trustee.
For one and a half years, despite five parties being represented in the Kars assembly, a working culture that could be exemplary for Turkey was manifested whereby most resolutions were passed unanimously. In the past, too, Kars has been run with a council in which all sections were represented. The dissolution of the municipal assembly shows that not just my or the HDP’s will, but that of the whole of Kars, has been disregarded.
Also while under arrest, you tweeted, “Those who are contemplating appointing a trustee to our municipality should read the Russian military governor’s memoirs regarding Kars one hundred and fifty years ago. With the governor unable to govern the city, he was forced to set up a council.” Why did you say such a thing? Can you flesh this out? What sort of results will the appointing of a trustee give rise to?
The Russian military, which captured Kars at the end of the 1870’s, appointed a trustee. Some while later, unable to govern the city, the governor created a committee of various people’s representatives. A tender similar to one the one-man administration held was conducted years later in the council administration period and lighting services for the city were procured at a far lower cost. Participation means transparency and means accountability. It means tackling corruption.
You had to deal with plenty of things in your time as mayor. Can you speak of these again to refresh memories of them?
We facilitated an insolvent municipality to provide service with the support of all parties and the city. Tackling corruption was paramount to get a city that could stand on its own feet in cognizance of its own resources. This increased trust in the municipality. People displayed sensitivity in paying their long-standing dues. There were first-time initiatives involving the cooperative and women’s solidarity centre. Most importantly, identity-based factionalist politics in the city came to naught. We paid what was owed to workers out of long-standing dues. From among other dues, we had those we looked askance at remitted to the judiciary. With our working colleagues previously getting paid four to five months in arrears, we created a budget capable of making payments without missing deadlines. We succeeded together with our colleagues in breaking down prejudices against women participating in the administration. We created resources for many cultural endeavours with voluntary consultants.
You have reserved criticism for the opposition. You have spoken of the opposition being unable to set the course for the power holders and apply democratic pressure to it. Would you elaborate on this? Why do you criticize the opposition? What are your suggestions to the opposition?
We are encountering a global political crisis. This is not just a crisis of authoritarian right-wing populist politics centred around the power holders. It is also the crisis of an opposition unable to bring about the participation of social dynamics in political processes. Trust in politics is being rocked to the core. This deals a blow to trust and hope of creating solutions within democracy. In such periods, the opposition, rather than being party to the politics of tension through polemics, must promote discussion of its own alternative proposals for solution. Otherwise, you cannot write your own story and be an alternative to those in power by simply banding together based on opposing. The calculation that ever-increasing impoverishment and warping of the distribution of income will change electoral behaviour by just awaiting the power holders’ dilapidation is an incorrect calculation. The opposition must quite manifestly enter into debate with the public over the programme for democracy, the law and economy that will give direction to the future and, to this end, each party must target a widening of its own base.
You said, “If I’m detained, I’ll write a third book.” Can you give details of your book?
In Turkish politics, the party bases are more tolerant towards one another and consider the tension above to be meaningless. I wrote about devoted politics in my second book. And in my third, I’ll deal with rights-based politics. I’ll try to discuss the obstacles that disable society from being a subject in politics.
(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)
Aras Coşkuntuncel
