The death of a dismissed teacher in Ankara has drawn renewed attention to the hardships faced by individuals and families affected by a sweeping government crackdown launched after a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, which led to mass dismissals and prosecutions.
According to reporting by the TR724 news website, Belkıs Çağlar, a 48-year-old former teacher who was removed from her job under emergency decrees issued after a coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, died of a heart attack at her home on Sunday.
In a post on X, Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a member of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), said Çağlar had faced serious financial and emotional difficulties in recent years.
Çağlar had been raising her three children alone after losing her job under the post-coup decrees since her husband was in prison.
Turkey experienced a controversial military coup attempt on the night of July 15, 2016, which according to many was a false flag operation aimed at entrenching the authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by rooting out dissidents and eliminating powerful actors such as the military in his desire for absolute power.
Çağlar’s husband, retired brigadier general Ali Rıza Çağlar, has been imprisoned for nearly nine years after being convicted in a major trial related to the coup attempt. He was sentenced to aggravated life despite presenting video evidence that he was attending a wedding on the night of the attempted overthrow.
Çağlar was among tens of thousands of public servants dismissed under decree laws issued during Turkey’s state of emergency declared after the failed coup in July 2016.
The Turkish government blames the coup attempt on the faith-based Gülen movement, inspired by US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, and has since carried out a sweeping purge of state institutions.
More than 130,000 public servants were dismissed through emergency decrees during the state of emergency, which remained in force until July 2018, often over alleged links to terrorist organizations without individualized court rulings. Most were accused of ties to the Gülen movement, although some faced allegations related to left-wing or Kurdish groups.
The specific grounds for Ekinci’s dismissal or whether he was accused of links to the Gülen movement were not clear.
Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs but also banned from working again in the public sector and getting a passport to seek employment abroad. The government also made it difficult for them to work formally in the private sector. Notes were put on the social security database about dismissed public servants to deter potential employers.
As a result, many purge victims have had to work in uninsured jobs with very little workplace safety. There have also been several cases where former public servants have died due to occupational accidents in physically demanding jobs.
In recent years, some of the people fired have been reinstated, yet this process has often come too late. Numerous cases have surfaced where dismissed individuals, facing severe emotional and financial strain, have died by suicide or otherwise passed away before their reinstatement.
