Talha Dalkıran, a former teacher who was dismissed by an emergency decree over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement following a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, died on Tuesday in Balıkesir province, with a video in which he reflected on his ordeal going viral online.
According to the TR724 news website, Dalkıran lost consciousness shortly after midnight and was taken to a hospital, where efforts to revive him failed.
A religious education teacher in İstanbul at the time of his dismissal, Dalkıran later moved to the Edremit district of Balıkesir, where he worked as an olive harvester and construction worker.
Dalkıran’s death renewed grief on social media over the human toll of the post-coup purge. A video he had shared in December, in which he reflected on nearly a decade of hardship, went viral following news of his death.
In the video, filmed before dawn as he left for work, Dalkıran spoke of his ordeal. “Those who inflicted this persecution on us are sleeping comfortably,” he said. “Let them sleep. They will have to answer for it in the hereafter.”
Dalkıran was said to have consistently expressed hope of returning to teaching as no criminal case had ever been filed against him.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted 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. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a failed 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.
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. 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.
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.
