The application of "Trustee" as a strategy for fighting the PKK terrorist organization

In order to neutralize the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist organization, which the State of the Republic of Türkiye has been fighting for nearly forty years, new strategies are constantly being developed against the changing course of action of the organization. In the summer of 2015, Türkiye faced a violent terrorist wave including street incidents. In its new strategy, which it developed in order to gain strength in the region, the PKK chose the municipalities as its target and went to organizational structuring in many municipalities in the region. The main feature that distinguishes this process from previous periods is that the PKK started to use the resources of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) municipalities in the region. While the municipalities declared their so-called autonomy, on the other hand, they started to use the institution and its facilities for illegal purposes through the mayors. Municipalities, whose duty is to meet the local needs of citizens, have been tried to be transformed into autonomous administrations and started to be used as tools that refer to the indivisible integrity of Türkiye with the state and nation as defined in Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Türkiye. While the decision-making bodies of the municipalities can only be changed by elections, except for exceptional cases, with the Decree Law No. 674 issued in 2016 in the face of the PKK's new strategy, deputies of mayors, referred to as "trustees", were appointed to the municipalities that made their resources available to terrorist organizations. The flow of resources to the terrorist organization through municipalities was prevented by trustee assignments and the PKK's effectiveness was broken with military operations. The trustee application, which entered the Turkish administrative system as a new practice in terms of fighting terrorism, is intended to be an effective fight strategy in the fight against the PKK. It has been seen that the trustee practice, which was subjected to serious criticism at the beginning, was not an application that made the municipalities dysfunctional over time, but an application that opened the public resources to the terrorist organization to the use of the citizens, broke the effectiveness of the organization by cutting the financial resources of terrorism, and increased the peace and investments in the region with the secure environment it created. The trustee practice has become an exemplary practice in the multifaceted fight against terrorism as one of the strategic methods of struggle against the PKK, which has been persecuting the people of the region for years. In this study, it is examined to what extent the reasons for the trustee practice coincide with the norms of international law, what kind of changes occur with the prevention of the resources going to the terrorist organization and channeling them into the service of the citizens and the development of the region, how the trustee practice, which is seen as a practice contrary to local democracy, has an effect on local democracy and the results of the trustee application and the results of the trustee application, an effective strategy in the fight against the PKK terrorist organization will be emphasized. Keywords: PKK Terrorist Organization, Counterterrorism, Security, Trustee, Municipalities