DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Has Turkey’s Kurdish movement come to the end of the road after two decades as a major player in local administrations? It is a troubling question for many in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, where, a year after local elections last spring, the Kurdish-dominated Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is left with only 19 of the 59 mayoral offices it had won. The rest have been taken over by government-appointed trustees. Not even the coronavirus outbreak has slowed Ankara’s crackdown, which, many now fear, will continue until the last HDP-run municipality is seized.

The Kurdish political movement made its first major foray into local administrations in 1999 by winning 37 municipalities in the conflict-torn southeast, where the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has led an armed insurgency for nearly four decades. For ordinary Kurds, winning and running local administrations has been a source of pride. Kurdish mayors — often elected by a landslide — were the main political voice of the aggrieved minority in the many years the Kurdish movement was absent from the parliament in Ankara. Over the years, Kurdish mayors were often accused of links with the PKK and mismanagement, facing trials, inspections and vitriol. Yet, despite its heavy-handed policies on the Kurdish issue, Ankara never attempted an all-out purge.

Things changed in 2015, when settlement talks between Ankara and the Kurds collapsed, marking the end of a relatively moderate climate for the Kurds. The ensuing crackdown on armed PKK militants in urban areas was soon followed by massive purges amid a nationwide emergency rule in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt. The purges targeted all sorts of Kurdish entities, from political groups and civic associations to media outlets and cultural centers. Among the first in line was the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), which at the time represented the Kurdish movement on a local level. The government seized 95 of 101 DBP-run local administrations, appointing trustees instead of elected mayors, many of whom landed in jail for alleged links with the PKK, which Ankara lists as a terrorist group. The crackdown extended to parliament, where more than a dozen HDP lawmakers were stripped of their seats, with some of them still in jail.

While the Kurdish movement gasped, largely sidelined from the political scene, the trustees enjoyed broad financial means — courtesy of the government — to improve services and win the good graces of locals. Still, the HDP managed to win 59 local administrations in the March 31, 2019, municipal polls. The enthusiasm of the new mayors, however, lasted only four months. Diyarbakir, the largest city of the southeast, and two other major cities, Van and Mardin, lost their mayors in August in what became the first episode of a fresh ouster campaign by the government. In the latest round on March 23, Ankara dismissed eight HDP mayors, bringing the total to 40, astounding anyone who may have thought that it had its hands full with the coronavirus outbreak in the country.