Teachers have begun hunger strikes in a central Ankara park after encountering violent treatment from the police during protests outside the Education Ministry.
Teachers who have passed the teaching exam but have not been assigned a position, along with private school teachers forced to work for low salaries, staged protests at Kurtuluş Park, which was also recently the scene of protests by unpaid miners.
Police had used pepper gas and handcuffed many teachers behind the back during protests in front of the Education Ministry. After their attempts to march toward parliament were blocked, some of the teachers began a hunger strike, rejecting calls to leave Ankara.
During protests that started on June 15, police handcuffed and forced many to the ground, including Education and Science Workers' Union (Eğitim-Sen) Chair Kemal Irmak, Education and Science Workers' Union (Eğitim-İş) Chair Kadem Özbay, and many other education workers.
Teachers wearing headscarves also were subject to rough treatment from the police and spoke to reporters about the double standards police apply to women who cover their heads and those who do not.
'They opened my headscarf, they tore my shirt! I put on a hat,' said one headscarf-wearing teacher, who told cameras that police were notified not to use violence against headscarf-wearing women. 'There used to be victims of the headscarf ban; now there are victims among unappointed teachers and private school teachers. We will not leave here until we get what we are owed.'
Another headscarf-wearing teacher said she was not detained only because she was wearing a headscarf, and that she was removed from the cordon by police instead.
Instead of meeting with the protesters, Education Minister Yusuf Tekin attended the 'Turkey's Cheese Culture' event, which introduced 472 kinds of cheese, in Bursa, where union representatives tried to convey their complaints despite being prevented from doing so. The minister did not address the protests at Kurtuluş Park.
A bill submitted by the İYİ Party proposing to review the working conditions of unappointed teachers and private school teachers was rejected by AKP and MHP votes.
The private school teachers are demanding the restoration of the base salary right, and an end to the job insecurity caused by fixed-term contracts. Additionally, teachers who say they were unfairly treated in oral interviews for jobs are demanding their immediate appointment.
