Post-coup purge will affect Turkey’s education sector for decades

Demonstrators shout during a protest against the suspension of academics from universities following a post-coup emergency decree in Ankara (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images)
Demonstrators shout during a protest against the suspension of academics from universities following a post-coup emergency decree in Ankara (Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images)


Date posted: November 29, 2016

Umar Farooq

With more than 120,000 public workers suspended and nearly 40,000 people in prison, the aftermath of Turkey’s failed July 15 coup is being felt across every part of society, including its highest-ranked schools.

The day after the coup attempt, 1,577 deans — working at nearly every university in the country — were forced to resign. An estimated 200,000 students were left in limbo after the closure of 15 universities and 1,043 private schools reportedly linked to Fethullah Gulen, the cleric the Turkish government blames for the putsch. More than 6,000 academics at 107 universities have since been fired as well, many accused of links to Gulen’s movement or the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

“These last few months will have an impact on our society that will last for decades to come,” said Ozgur Bozdogan, the head of Egitim-Sen, one of the country’s largest teachers unions.

At Istanbul’s Bogazici University, students and faculty members have been holding daily protests this week after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used emergency powers to appoint a new rector, bypassing a decades-old practice that saw university staff members elect their boss from among their ranks.

“The old rector was trying to defend the democratic autonomous structure of the university,” said Ahmet, a senior studying economics, who asked that his full name not be used. Founded in 1863 by American philanthropists, Bogazici has long been considered one of the most liberal schools in the country. Police are not permitted to enter the campus, and student groups regularly host conferences on largely taboo subjects such as the Armenian genocide and the treatment of the country’s Kurdish minority.


At a protest this week on the street outside the campus gates, Ahmet noticed a police officer staring at him across the crowd of 300 hundred students and teachers with whom he was marching. “He walked towards me and the crowd split apart to make way for him, before I started running,” Ahmed said.

Police grabbed Ahmet, but moments later fellow students freed him. “We all wanted to make sure no one was detained, because now under the state of emergency you don’t know how long you will be in prison,” he said.

“The government wants to end our autonomy, they have always seen Bogazici as a kind of enemy,” Ahmet said. The newly appointed rector, Mehmed Ozkan, has pledged to protect the university’s “participatory, pluralistic and free tradition.” But students such as Ahmet fear space for criticizing the government will only shrink. Ozkan’s sister is a parliament member from the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP.

It’s not just university students who are being affected by the sweeping post-coup measures.

When primary and secondary students returned to school this year, they spent most of the first day watching videos about the “triumph of democracy” over the coup plotters, and speeches by Erdogan that equate the civilian counter-coup with historic Ottoman victories going back 1,000 years.

Meanwhile, authorities scrambled to find replacements for the nearly 30,000 teachers at the primary and secondary levels who had been suspended and another 30,000 who had been fired under emergency rule, accused of having ties to Gulen or the PKK.

“People fear this climate, because they cannot really protest against this process; everyone fears losing their jobs,” said Mustafa Turgut, a high school literature teacher in Istanbul. Turgut has no books to teach from, because the Ministry of Education has ordered a review of all textbooks for possible links to Gulen or the PKK.

“We have experienced a coup, and right now there is a sensitivity in our society,” Muammer Yildiz, the deputy undersecretary of education said this month about the textbook restrictions. “We follow this sensitivity carefully.”  Millions of textbooks had to be reprinted for the new year, and 58 textbooks were banned.

Turgut has watched his colleagues being fired or jailed, while others have left the country. One teacher from the eastern city of Tunceli, Turgut said, fled to Canada with his two children. “I talked to him on the phone, he said ‘I don’t want to raise my kids in a madman’s hell.’”

The Turkish government has designated both Gulen’s movement — which at one point ran some of the country’s leading private universities and schools — as well as the PKK as terrorist organizations, and said the dismissals of teachers was meant to root out these groups.

The suspended teachers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in September, “have had certain types of connections to terror,” and investigations would determine “how many of these are directly associated with the terrorist organization, and how many are not.”

The Education Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly 10,000 of the teachers fired or suspended after July 15 have been members of the Egitim-Sen union, which often rallies alongside the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party, or HDP, itself now the target of an investigation for suspected ties to the PKK. About 1,800 of the left-leaning union’s members, including Turgut, are facing criminal or disciplinary investigations into terrorism and other serious crimes.

The investigations are the end result of years of efforts by the Justice and Development Party to control schools, said Turgut, who until three weeks ago taught at an elite high school in Istanbul where students must score in the top one percentile on national standardized tests to enroll. In the last two years authorities have tried to alter the curriculum to be more conservative, canceling programs such as concerts, plays and even student-run philosophy discussion groups.

“But after the coup, the [AKP] has been taking bigger steps and faster steps to make these schools more conservative,” Turgut said, “and now it is much easier to do, because you can link anyone against you to any terrorist organization, without any investigation.”

Source: LA Times , November 26, 2016


Related News

Kimse Yok Mu to distribute 90,000 food packages during Ramadan

The Kimse Yok Mu (Is Anybody There) charity foundation will be offering aid packages to 90,000 families in all the 81 provinces during the holy month of Ramadan. The fasting month of Ramadan, deemed the sultan of all the months by Muslims, is considered the most venerated, blessed and spiritually beneficial month of the Islamic […]

Paranoia: Turkish ‘hero’ T-shirts land dozens in jail

Dozens of people are being rounded up all over Turkey for wearing white T-shirts with the word “hero” printed in English across the front. The arrests are being carried out based on the suspicion that the wearers are sympathisers and supporters of Fethullah Gulen.

Islamabad High Court: No plan to close Pak-Turk schools

The government is not going to shut down Pak-Turk schools nor it has received any request from the Turkish government for the transfer of its management to any third party. This was stated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in written comments submitted to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) in response to a petition filed by the management of the Pak-Turk schools.

Kimse Yok Mu waits weeks for aid campaign go-ahead

Turkish charity Kimse Yok Mu (Is Anybody There?) has been waiting 37 days for permission from the İstanbul Governor’s Office to continue seven aid campaigns bringing various kinds of relief and services to people in need around the world.

U.N. rights chief questions due process in Turkey purges

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights voiced deep concern on Monday at mass arrests and sackings of public employees in Turkey and the renewed state of emergency there, saying a “climate of fear” now reigned.

TUSKON chairman to Erdoğan: To make fortune, join business world

In a response to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call to Hizmet movement to form a political party, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON) chairman Rıza Nur Meral called Erdoğan to quit politics and join the business world to make money.

Latest News

Fethullah Gulen – man of education, peace and dialogue – passes away

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

In Case You Missed It

Fresh resignation in Turkey’s ruling AKP over graft scandal

Nigeria Turkish College to Host Language, Culture Festival

Did Erdoğan say ‘shut up’ to Gen. Eruygur?

Inside the eye of Turkey’s political storm, in rural Pennsylvania

Belgian minister presents Turkish schools as example of high quality education

Dismissed after coup attempt, teacher detained during visit to imprisoned relative

Reflections on a Hizmet-inspired school in Tanzania

Copyright 2025 Hizmet News