Hakan Ceniklioğlu, a former police officer dismissed over alleged links to faith-based Gülen movement, died on Friday after four months in intensive care following a workplace accident, highlighting the deadly risks faced by purge victims forced into unsafe and informal employment.
Ceniklioğlu was working as a lathe operator when he was struck on the head by a heavy object at a workplace in Samsun province. He underwent three brain surgeries and remained in critical condition until his death. He was dismissed from the police force under an emergency decree issued after a coup attempt in Turkey in 2016.
The death was announced on social media by Ömer Faruk Gergerloğlu, a human rights defender and lawmaker from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).
In a post on X Gergerlioğlu urged authorities to address the longstanding problems faced by those dismissed under emergency decrees, warning that they would not escape moral responsibility. “There is a deep anguish,” he said.
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 the 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.
Turkey declared a state of emergency following the failed coup that remained in effect until July 19, 2018. During the state of emergency, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) carried out a purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight by issuing a number of government decrees, known as KHKs, firing over 130,000 civil servants from their jobs due to their real or alleged connections to “terrorist organizations.”
Dismissed public servants were not only fired from their jobs; they were also prohibited from working again in the public sector and getting a passport. 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.
