ISTANBUL — Turkey’s government said Monday that it had indicted three popular mayors from Kurdish-majority provinces on terrorism charges and replaced them with state officials.
The suspension came five months after the mayors won landslide victories in local polls. Opposition parties criticized the move as anti-democratic, saying it was the latest evidence that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is intent on marginalizing pro-Kurdish voices.





The mayors of Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van are members of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, a pro-Kurdish party. Between them, they won nearly a million votes in local elections held in March — easily defeating candidates from Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.