Turkey revoked the teaching licenses of 22,474 teachers and shut down 1,424 private educational institutions over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement in the aftermath of a coup attempt in 2016, Bold Medya reported.
A circular issued by the Turkish Ministry of Education on July 21, 2016, barred dismissed teachers from being employed in any other private schools, effectively preventing them from continuing their careers in education. Although teaching licenses were reinstated for 2,182 educators, 20,292 permanently lost the right to work in their profession.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Many of the fired teachers were forced to take up informal or dangerous jobs to survive, leading in some cases to fatal workplace accidents. Others, such as Gazi Bahargülü, died by suicide. Stress, financial hardship and social exclusion triggered severe health problems for many dismissed educators.
Following the coup attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that remained in effect until July 19, 2018. During this period, the government carried out a purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight by issuing a number of government decrees. Over 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as more than 24,000 members of the armed forces were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
As part of the broader post-coup purge, Turkey also fired 34,795 teachers from public schools over alleged links to the Gülen movement.
According to the latest figures from the Justice Ministry, more than 126,000 people have been convicted for alleged links to the movement since 2016, with 11,085 still in prison. Legal proceedings are ongoing for over 24,000 individuals, while another 58,000 remain under active investigation nearly a decade later.
In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.
