Mustafa Avcı, a member of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Local Administration Coordination Board, spoke to ANF and assessed the role of municipalities and local politics within this new vision. In the second part of the interview, Avcı said that, given that it is people who set priorities, meetings with citizens are crucial.
The first part of this interview can be read here.
What are your priorities for concrete services that will affect daily life at the local level, such as infrastructure, water, education and health, so that the Peace and Democratic Society Process becomes tangible for the people?
Priorities are determined by the people. With our understanding of participatory democracy and participatory budgeting, we hold extensive public meetings at the neighbourhood and street level. In these meetings, the current state of the municipalities, the pressure placed on local administrations by the central government and the opportunities created by the political process are shared with the public, and the community’s essential needs are identified.
Of course, it is not possible to respond to all demands at once with the available municipal budgets. For this reason, the demands collected from the public are voted on again by the public, the primary priorities are determined and then included in our programme for implementation. In some places, access to clean water is the main demand. In others, it is green space, traffic junctions, saving young people affected by drugs, multi-purpose community houses or, in many areas, solving unemployment. Our municipalities are doing their best to address these demands.
Naturally, after being elected, we aim to fulfil our commitment to provide equal services; however, during the trusteeship regime, services were provided according to election results, which created serious inequality and discrimination. Our first priority is therefore to eliminate this existing discrimination while delivering services. Once this discrimination is removed, providing equal and accessible services to everyone will, of course, remain among our core commitments and will be carried out.
Are you planning concrete steps for young people and unemployed residents? What kinds of programmes or projects could contribute to both economic and social normalisation?
Unemployment is one of the issues that drains our energy the most and urgently requires solutions. We know that resolving unemployment is the responsibility of the central government, yet there is deep injustice, inequality and discrimination in this area as well. Young people are being pushed into migration, and every wave of migration creates a pool of cheap labour. For this reason, accessible job opportunities close to where people live are not being created.
Even though it is not our formal responsibility, we address unemployment as a societal issue and try to find solutions. But it is impossible to solve such a massive problem through municipalities alone. With the personnel quota already exceeded to such an extreme degree because of the trusteeship regimes, it is not realistic to address unemployment solely through municipal employment. We are therefore working on developing projects and creating alternative areas of employment. For urgent cases, we rely on partnerships with the private sector.
The most fundamental solution is to reconnect people who have been detached from productive life with production itself. Rural areas must once again become as attractive as urban spaces. By allocating significant portions of the municipal budget and providing as much support and incentives as possible, we must help people reconnect with their land and their highlands and enable them to sustain themselves in the places they were born and raised.
When necessary, building collective strength and organising solidarity through production and consumption cooperatives becomes essential. There is a considerable amount of Kurdish capital that has migrated elsewhere. We are working on establishing dialogue and encouraging this capital to return.
Otherwise, relying solely on social aid packages under the banner of social or people-oriented municipalism is misleading and cannot offer a radical solution. If continued, it merely imitates classical municipalism and the centralist, monolithic mindset of the ruling power. This approach has never produced solutions, and it will not do so in the future.
What concrete steps can local administrations take to protect the Kurdish language, culture and local values? Which projects can municipalities implement immediately?
Language and culture work will undoubtedly be one of our main priorities. A person who does not protect their own language, culture and nature loses their essence. As municipalities committed to a libertarian, egalitarian and ecological approach, we must develop serious ideas and projects in this field; we already are, and this work continues.
With our multilingual municipal model, services are offered in the local population’s mother tongue as much as possible, depending on demographic needs that vary from area to area. Municipalities are opening language courses; staff who do not speak the local language are encouraged to learn it. Place and direction signs are prepared and installed in multiple languages. Multilingual kindergartens are being opened. Joint projects are being organised in coordination with language institutions, sometimes through service procurement. Social media posts, brochures, street banners and billboards are also prepared in multiple languages.
If a language is to be kept alive, it must become or be made into a marketplace language. For this reason, we hold regular dialogues with tradespeople and discuss ways to strengthen the use of Kurdish in economic life. Culturally, we work jointly and in coordination with cultural institutions. Where possible, cultural complexes are built and made functional. Facilities that were damaged or repurposed by the trusteeship regime are repaired and returned to public use in line with their original purpose.
We also allocate budgets and create opportunities for festivals, concerts and theatre performances. We never grant approval to entrepreneurs whose projects would harm the natural balance. There are, of course, those who try to bypass local administrations and work directly through the central government. Even in such cases, we do our best to assert local initiative to prevent harm to the environment, nature, historical heritage and local values overall.