Thirty-one female candidates throughout Turkey won mayoral posts in the March 30 local elections, but especially in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region, which led by a wide margin in terms of the number of women elected to mayoral positions thanks to a quota for woman in the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). In the male-dominated Turkish political landscape, only three women were elected mayors in the southeastern metropolitan municipalities of Diyarbakir and Gaziantep as well as Aydin, in western Anatolia. Districts that have a population of over 750,000 are qualified to become metropolitan municipalities. Former Family and Social Policy Minister Fatma Sahin from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was elected in Gaziantep, G