Teachers continue to find themselves in Erdogan firing line

WHILE MANY Turkish military officials accused of being involved in a failed 2016 coup attempt to return to their duties, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is still purging and arresting teachers from government and private schools.

According to Turkeypurge.com, since July 2016 the Turkish government has shut down 3 003 schools, dormitories and universities.

The website also maintains that over the past two years, more than 20 000 teachers working in private schools were stripped of their licences by the Turkish Ministry of Education.

It is further thought that tens of thousands of teachers were dismissed from public schools to pave the way for new recruits hired based on their political party affiliation, and Erdogan’s Islamist ideology.

The Turkish leader is allegedly trying to do the same in Africa by undertaking frequent trips to the continent where he is said to be making sales pitches for his giant educational foundation, the Maarif Foundation, that was created by a special law he pushed through the parliament in June 2016.

Erdogan’s Maarif Foundation has already managed to get Hizmet schools in some Muslim majority countries such as Guinea, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Senegal, Gabon, and Chad either closed down or transferred to his Maarif Foundation.

Erdogan’s intelligence apparatus has also been accused of kidnapping teachers from a number of countries.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation abducted 80 Turkish nationals from 18 countries so far over their alleged links to the Gülen movement.

As Boko Haram’s student abduction sparks anger globally, Erdogan’s teacher abductions have similarly caused strong reactions.

Students and parents protested against their authorities as well as the Erdogan government in Senegal, Kosovo, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Afghans have collected one million signatures to prevent the transfer of Turkish Hizmet schools founded and operated by the Gülen movement.

Mohammad Yusuf Pashtun, head of the Afghan-Turk Parents Association, said they will not allow any country or organisation to use its support for Afghanistan’s education as a pretext for interfering in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs and pursuing its own interests.

Erdogan’s spies abducted a Turkish teacher, Kaçmaz, and his family from Pakistan and took them to Turkey on a plane sent from Istanbul.

The Kaçmazs were living in Pakistan under an asylum seeker certificate issued by UNHCR, which was valid until November last year.

Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj sacked the interior minister and secret service chief for failing to inform him about arrests of Turks.

He ordered an investigation of all those involved in arresting and deporting six Turkish men on March 29.