‘Nude’ snowwoman gets Turkish teacher into trouble

KAHRAMANMARAŞ

Turkish officials have launched a probe after a teacher posed for a photo with her students who made a snowwoman that “violates social values,” Turkish media reported April 7.

Çilem Sakine Coşkun, a physical education teacher at Nurhak Anadolu High School in the southern Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, was recently photographed with a group of students who had made a snowwoman in the schoolyard. But local Education Ministry officials launched a probe into Coşkun for “appearing in a photograph that violates social values,” according to an April 7 report by daily Vatan. 

Although officials did not clarify what exactly “violates social values,” the schoolchildren’s decision to emphasize the snowwoman’s breasts and apparently nude tummy could be the reason, a number of social media users argued.

The local branch of Eğitim-Sen, a teacher’s union, condemned the investigation and linked it to the death of Halil Serkan Öz, an award-winning teacher in the western province of Yalova who died due to a heart attack soon after he was reprimanded by a governor over his hair, beard and clothes.

“The mindset that insulted a TÜBİTAK award-winning teacher in Yalova over his clothes and the mindset that cannot tolerate a snowwoman in Nurhak are the manifestation of the same darkness,” the union’s statement said.

Coşkun has faced other ministry probes in the past for being an administrator of Eğitim-Sen in Nurhak.