ISTANBUL -- Turkey announced Sunday that it had replaced 28 elected municipal and district mayors in several predominantly Kurdish towns in the country's east and southeast, saying the leaders are suspected of colluding with groups the government considers terrorist organizations.
The move led to protests that police later dispersed using water cannons and tear gas.
The Interior Ministry said the decision to remove the mayors was in line with a governmental decree enacted in the wake of a failed military coup.
Turkey declared a state of emergency after the July 15 coup attempt, allowing the government to rule by decree. It has since suspended tens of thousands of people from government jobs over suspected links to terrorist organizations.
Of the 28 mayors who were replaced, 24 are suspected of ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, and four are thought to be linked to the movement led by U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which the government says is responsible for the abortive coup that left more than 270 people dead.
The Interior Ministry said in its statement that when local governments "come under the influence of terrorist organizations, it is the state's primary duty to take precautions against those who have usurped the people's will."
"Being an elected official isn't a license to commit crimes," Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag wrote on Twitter. "If mayors and town councilors finance terrorism by transferring public funds allocated to them to serve the people ... they lose their democratic legitimacy."
The U.S. Embassy in Ankara expressed concern over the government's actions, saying in a statement that it hoped the substitute office-holders who took up their new posts Sunday would be temporary and that "local citizens will soon be permitted to choose new local officials in accordance with Turkish law."
Three of the 28 officials are members of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party; one belongs to the Nationalist Movement Party. The rest belong to pro-Kurdish parties.
The pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party condemned the appointments as a "coup by trustees" that violates the Turkish constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.
"This unlawful and arbitrary action will only deepen existing problems in Kurdish towns and cause the Kurdish issue to be even more unsolvable," the party said in a statement.
The main opposition Republican People's Party also condemned the move. Senior party members spoke to reporters in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where they called the appointments unlawful and said they would be taking the decision to Turkey's constitutional court.
Addressing the nation Sunday for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was determined to "save Turkey from the PKK scourge," using an acronym for the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
"Like the Gulen movement, the PKK cannot possibly withstand the power of the people and the strength of the state," Erdogan said in a video statement.
The private Dogan news agency reported that a group of about 200 people gathered in front of city hall in the southeastern town of Suruc to protest the government-installed officials and were dispersed with tear gas and water cannons. A protest in front of Batman city hall was broken up in the same way.
Four people, including a deputy mayor, were briefly detained in a minor skirmish outside city hall in the southeastern province of Hakkari. Co-Mayor Fatma Yildiz, who was replaced Sunday morning, said the decision was "a blow against the will of the people," Dogan reported.
Turkish media reported that Internet and electricity were out in the affected cities in the morning, but no official reason was given.
Also on Sunday, about 40 prominent academics and authors from around the world urged Turkey's government to end what they say is the persecution of the country's writers and professors who voice a differing point of view.
In an open letter released Sunday, academics and authors including Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and British Booker Prize winner John Berger called on supporters to protest what they said is the Turkish government's "vendetta" against its brightest thinkers.
They said the failed coup shouldn't be used as a pretext for a "[Joe] McCarthy-style witch hunt," referring to the Wisconsin senator who led an anti-communism crusade in the 1950s.
The letter said the group was particularly disturbed by the detention of novelist Ahmet Altan and his brother Mehmet Altan, an economics professor, who Turkey accused of transmitting subliminal messages to rally coup supporters on TV the night before the coup attempt.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/12/2016