Dozens held as teachers protest suspensions

DİYARBAKIR - Reuters

AFP photo

Turkish police detained dozens of people and used water cannon on Sept. 9 to disperse several hundred teachers demonstrating against their suspension from classrooms in the eastern province of Diyarbakır, union sources said and TV footage showed. 

Brawls erupted and police pushed back crowds after Turkish authorities suspended more than 11,000 teachers on Sept. 8 over alleged links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  

A further 418 teachers were also suspended from duty in the eastern province of Tunceli on Sept. 9. Several hundred teachers gathered in front of the education ministry’s provincial building to protest. 

“This is an attack on our unionized struggle,” Süleyman Güler, the provincial head of the education union, Egitim-Sen, told Reuters. 

Güler was also suspended from work. 

“It is not possible to accept this decision. There is neither a crime here nor a criminal. We call for the immediate halt of this move,” he said. 

Demonstrations have been banned across Diyarbakır since mid-August during the state of emergency declared after the failed July 15 coup. 

On Sept. 9, the Diyarbakır governor’s office also imposed a curfew in more than a 
dozen neighborhoods across three districts, as security operations were planned the PKK militants.