A Turkish opposition lawmaker said Sunday that a teacher dismissed under a government decree over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement died by suicide on Sunday in western Turkey, the TR724 news website reported.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), said in a post on X that Ali Ülker, 51, died after years of struggling with the consequences of his dismissal and subsequent imprisonment over his alleged links to the movement. He was sentenced to more than eight years in prison and released after five on parole.
“Ülker was a married father of two. “His morale collapsed, he could not hold on to life,” the lawmaker wrote.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members 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.
Following the failed coup in 2016, 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.
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.
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.
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.
According to a notice published by the Salihli Municipality, Ülker’s funeral was held September 28 at Cumhuriyet Mosque, after which he was buried in the town’s Asri Cemetery.
