Riot police fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters demonstrating in southeast Turkey on Tuesday against the ousting of three Kurdish mayors five months after they were elected.

Axar.az reports citing Reuters that Ankara replaced the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) mayors with state officials on Monday and detained more than 400 people for suspected militant links in a step sharply criticized by opposition parties.

In Diyarbakir, the region’s biggest city, police repeatedly used water cannon on small groups of protesters, who huddled on the streets to protect themselves from the water cannon and made victory signs with their hands.

Riot police struck protesters with batons as they fled the area. The protesters gathered near city hall, which was sealed off by metal barriers after a state administrator took office there on Monday in place of the elected mayor.

“You can see here today a regime of pressure and persecution,” HDP leader Sezai Temelli told reporters in a statement on the street in Diyarbakir as the police acted against the protesters.