06 January 2016•Update: 06 January 2016
ANKARA
Turkey's prime minister has lashed out at a number of municipalities in the country's southeast, promising punishment if a promised financial probe uncovers links to the outlawed PKK.
Speaking in Ankara on Wednesday, Ahmet Davutoglu said: "The heads of the municipalities that work as the logistics center of the terrorist organization will definitely pay the price for all this treason and malpractice."
Davutoglu said it must be questioned where the state funds provided to southeastern municipalities are transferred to.
He specifically named Mardin municipality in southern Turkey during his speech, saying:
"Sixty-two-point-six percent of Mardin Metropolitan Municipality's total expenditures are spent on personnel while the Turkish average figure is 11.7 percent. Why is the figure that high? What do these personnel serve for?," he asked.
"We will investigate one-by-one where these personnel expenses are pouring to, and will bring them to account," he added.
Davutoglu said the aim of some local authorities was not to maintain their cities or enable a happier and more prosperous life for their people but to help the “terrorist ideology” via "polemics, lies and black propaganda".
"They are spending the financial resources entrusted by the nation on dark channels rather than using them for the benefit of the nation itself," he said.
Davutoglu also slammed the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- which holds seats in the municipalities he criticized -- for calling for autonomy in the southeast while failing to properly use state funds.
"They happen to talk about some kind of illegal structures like 'autonomy, self-government.'
“Then we ask, 'how come you claim this will help the region develop while you are spending the money given to you ... not on investment but something else'," he added.
Late December, HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas said his party would support calls for the formation of "democratic autonomous regions" in Turkey's southeast as one of 14 items in a final declaration of the Democratic Society Congress held in southeastern Diyarbakir province.
