Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz
Kurdish politician
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Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz (born 1962, Mardin, Turkey) is a Kurdish politician and a former member of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and Mayor of Kiziltepe for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz | |
|---|---|
| Mayor of Kızıltepe | |
| In office March 2019 – November 2019 | |
| Succeeded by | Hüseyin Cam |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1962 (age 63–64) |
| Party | Peoples' Democratic Party |
Education
Nilüfer Elik Yılmaz received her primary and secondary education and attended high school in Kiziltepe.[1] Following, she began to study economics at the Anadolu University in Eskisehir, but did not graduate.[1]
Political career
She was a member of the women's assembly of the BDP.[1] Additionally she took a seat in the disciplinary council of the parties Madrid branch.[1] In the local elections in March 2019, she was elected as a mayor of Kiziltepe for the HDP with more than 70% of the voter-share.[2][3] During her tenure, the municipality supported the local football club.[4] She was dismissed from office in November 2019[3] on grounds of her activities in the Democratic Society Congress (DTK)[1] which was viewed as an indication of a membership in the forbidden Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[5] The ministry of the interior replaced her with the state appointed trustee Hüseyin Cam, who assumed as an acting mayor in her stead.[6][7] The same months, she was arrested and imprisoned in prison in Mardin.[1] Later she was transferred into a prison in Tarsus.[8] On the 17 March 2021, the state prosecutor Bekir Şahin demanded for her and 686 other HDP politicians a five-year ban to a political activity together with a closure of the HDP due to organizational links with the PKK.[9]