Mustafa Demirhan, a former mathematics teacher dismissed by an emergency decree over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, died at a hospital in Samsun on Monday at the age of 56, the TR724 news website reported.
Demirhan suffered a stroke after his dismissal and had recently been receiving treatment in intensive care.
He was dismissed during sweeping purges that followed a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on grounds of his membership in a teachers’ union and his cancellation of a subscription to the Digiturk satellite television platform during a boycott in 2015 backed by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The boycott began after Digiturk removed government-critical television channels from its lineup, with Turkish authorities subsequently treating subscription cancellations as evidence of links to the Gülen movement.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the Gülen movement, a worldwide civic initiative inspired by the ideas of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, who died in 2024, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after the coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
After his dismissal Demirhan was detained on accusations of membership in a terrorist organization and later released pending trial. He was ultimately acquitted but was not reinstated.
After losing his job, he sold milk and eggs and gave private lessons to make ends meet.
He is survived by a wife and two children.
Since the 2016 coup attempt Turkish authorities have convicted Gülen supporters of terrorism-related charges based on activities that courts consider indicative of affiliation, including membership in a labor union and an association affiliated with the movement, subscribing to the now-shuttered Zaman daily, working at affiliated private schools, depositing money in the now-closed Bank Asya, witness testimony and using ByLock, an encrypted messaging app once widely available on Apple’s App Store and Google Play that Turkish authorities claim was used as a secret communication tool for Gülen supporters.
In 2023 the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a landmark case that convictions based on ByLock use and other alleged Gülen-linked activities, such as having an account at a movement-affiliated bank, violated the rights to a fair trial, no punishment without law and freedom of association.
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. More than 113,000 civil servants and 4,362 judges and prosecutors were dismissed over alleged links to terrorist organizations, while more than 26,000 members of the armed forces were expelled from the military for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.
