Hatice Kahraman, a 40-year-old former teacher who was dismissed from her job by a government decree as part of purges that followed a 2016 coup attempt, died of a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday, the Bold Medya news website reported.
Kahraman was sentenced to eight years, nine months in prison on conviction of links to the Gülen movement following her dismissal and was released pending appeal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement after the abortive putsch of July 2016, which he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Following the failed coup, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants, including 4,156 judges and prosecutors, as well as 24,706 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.
Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs; they were also banned 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 by blacklisting them on the country’s social security database to deter potential employers, leading them to work in unskilled jobs with little workplace safety. There have been cases where former public servants have died in occupational accidents.
Kahraman’s passing was announced on X by Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, an MP from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and a prominent defender of human rights.
According to a joint report by the Justice for Victims Platform and Gergerlioğlu, the two-year-long state of emergency declared after the failed putsch caused immense suffering among public servants who were dismissed from their jobs by the government as well as their families.
The biggest problem they have been facing is economic hardship (97.9 percent) followed by psychological problems (88.6 percent), loss of social prestige and social exclusion (83.7 percent), the disintegration of social circles (83.1 percent), unemployment/lack of employment (80.4 percent) and lack of social security (73.2 percent).
