Mobbing by 'trustee' administration of Diyarbakır Municipality

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On October 25, 2016, simultaneous police raids were carried out on two houses in the early morning hours in the predominantly Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakır.

The houses belonged to the city's co-mayors Gültan Kışanak and Fırat Anlı of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), who were elected the co-mayors of Diyarbakır in the local elections March 31, 2014, with 55 percent of the votes.

While the co-mayors were taken into custody as part of a "terror investigation," gendarmerie and police officers searched the municipality building at the same time. The police had a search warrant for the entire city hall in relation to Gültan Kışanak. The gendarmerie searched Anlı's office.

After the incident was heard, the police response to the crowd that gathered in front of the municipality was harsh. Dozens of municipal employees, whom police tried to disperse by using pressurized water, were detained.

Anlı and Kışanak were not allowed to meet with their lawyers during the five days they were held in custody, on the grounds of confidentiality and restriction of the file. On October 30, Kışanak and Anlı, who were brought to Diyarbakır Courthouse and gave their depositions for nine hours, were arrested and sent to prison.

1,300 people were laid off

Ankara Etimesgut Sub-Governor Cumali Atilla, who was appointed as a trustee to the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality by the Ministry of Interior, arrived in Diyarbakır at night one day after the arrest.

As Atilla, who entered the municipality on November 1, started his new job, the countdown began for the purge of workers in the municipality. The trustee's first move was to dismiss 31 Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Theater (DBŞT) actors by not renewing their contracts on January 5, 2017.

The layoffs did not stop. The employment contracts of approximately 1,300 people, including heads of departments, branch managers, workers, civil servants, and subcontractors working in the Metropolitan Municipality and the Directorate General of Diyarbakır Water and Sewerage Administration (DİSKİ), were terminated, and workers and civil servants were dismissed with the Statutory Decrees issued at various intervals.

Mobbing

Employees who were not laid off were exposed to mobbing by changing their jobs and positions. One of them was journalist Beyda Yıldız, a graduate of Marmara University Communication Faculty, who started to work in the press department of the municipality in 2008.

During the appointment of the trustee, Yıldız's position as a press officer, who has been working as a "camera operator" at the General Directorate of DİSKİ since 2011, was changed. She was appointed under the command of a high school graduate in the Directorate of Press and Public Relations.

Less than a month later, her desk was taken away from her and her computer and archive were confiscated. Here she was kept on the sidelines, sitting in a chair for nine months. She faced unlawful investigations and punishments many times.

The delegation report was ignored

The committee report she received on myoma surgery at Diyarbakır Gynecology and Obstetrics Hospital was ignored. The report was sent to Urfa State Hospital for review instead of being examined at the University Hospital or State Hospital in Diyarbakır.

A disciplinary investigation was launched against Yıldız, who could not go to Urfa due to heavy bleeding. She was penalized and told she could take the penalty to the court. Also, her annual leave was canceled for the next year.

Afterward, Yıldız, who was exiled to the Hazro District Branch Directorate "on-demand", was forbidden by the General Manager of DİSKİ, Mehmet Fırat Tutşi, to get on an available company vehicle that was going to Hazro.

Yıldız suffered a cerebral hemorrhage due to the intense stress she experienced a few months after she went to Hazro. The treatment and follow-up of Yıldız, who was hospitalized for seventeen days in the Neurology Service of Dicle University Faculty of Medicine, still continue.

"I was exposed to threatening attitudes"

Stating that Mehmet Fırat Tutşi, who visited the Department of Water Facilities, where she had been working for a while, spread baseless rumors about her, Yıldız said, "Tutşi continued to offend me with sentences that started with 'This woman'. As if that weren't enough, I was exposed to the threatening attitudes of Tutsi's nephew and bodyguard, Selahattin Tutsi, who also works at DİSKİ despite being a General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works (DSİ) staff member."

Yıldız was exiled again with a new letter delivered to her on 09 April 2021. This time the address of the exile was Ergani. The reason for the exile was "on the occasion deemed necessary", as in other assignment letters.

Yıldız said, "I wonder what the occasion, the necessity, is. All the assignment letters put in front of me were made 'on the basis of perceived necessity', but it was never explained which necessity."

Summarizing the troubles she has been experiencing for nearly five years, Yıldız said;

"As a civil servant, it is against Article 45 of the Civil Servants Law No. 657 that I am not to be employed outside of my staff. In this article, it is stated that 'No civil servant can be employed outside of his or her class and in a position below his or her class'. Since I am in the cameraman staff, I have to be employed in a position suitable for it, in the Customer Services and Corporate Communications Department of the General Directorate of DİSKİ."

Stating that DİSKİ General Manager Tutşi does not see any harm in deepening mobbing with arbitrary practices against her and disregards her health, Yıldız said;

"Traveling for an hour every day to Ergani is risky for my health. My treatment has been going on for a long time in both Bower Hospital Neurology Service and Dicle University Psychiatry Service. The condemnation of a patient at risk like me to the roads is not only the result of an unscrupulous management approach but also of personalized cruel practices. I would like to announce here that if I have a new brain hemorrhage, the absolute responsibility for it is on Mehmet Fırat Tutşi, General Manager of DİSKİ."

Stating that she will file a case for a stay of execution by applying to the Diyarbakır Regional Administrative Court, Yıldız concluded by saying, "I believe that the superiority of law will end arbitrary practices." (BD/NÖ/DCE/VK)