New York Times : Sensing a Siege, Kurds Hit Back in Turkey

CIZRE, TURKEY — In this town on the Tigris, a dozen men huddled in a corner of city hall’s assembly chamber earlier this month, forgoing the empty rows of leather seats for a few chairs pulled up in an informal group.

“We’re keeping things going here,” Mustafa Goren, the acting mayor of Cizre, said, glancing up from zoning maps and applications for building permits. “We’re not going to be intimidated.”

The group is all that remains of the municipal council of this city, population 105,000, after successive waves of arrests have swept mayors, council members and staff into jail over the past couple of years.

Moving Photo of a child running for his life as Turkish police shows no mercy during Newroz celebration in Kurdistan 

Mr. Goren is the third mayor Cizre has seen since his party, the Peace and Democracy Party, won office in some 98 towns, including this one, across the Kurdish southeast of Turkey in elections in March 2009. The results horrified the political establishment in the Turkish capital, Ankara, where the party is suspected of ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.

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