Twenty five teachers who are members of the Education and Science Workers Union (Eğitim Sen) were detained in Diyarbakır (Amed) in Turkey on 6 November.
The reasons for the teachers’ detentions were stated to be their social media posts and their democratic actions, stated lawyers acting on their behalf. They were detained within the scope of an investigation that was conducted by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office which led to the operation against the members of Eğitim Sen. As part of the investigation, the homes of 25 teachers were raided.
The police, who also went to the schools where the detained teachers work, searched the rooms where the teachers worked and also searched their lockers. Sadrettin Kaya, Co-Chair of Eğitim Sen Diyarbakır Branch No. 1, commented on the nature of the detentions: “A confidentiality order has been placed on their file. Our lawyers are unable to access any information about the file and the current situation of our members. We are waiting to hear more”.
The names of some of the detained teachers are Şenay Koç, Zeynep Alak, Kasım Aydın, Hacer Alp, Hamdin Öztekin, Yıldırım Arslan, Abbas Şahin, Saliha Zorlu, Tahir Çetin, Recep Şimşek, Mehmet Baydemir, Mehmet Emin Üzel, Halis Kızılırmak, Fatih Mutlu, Ezgi Çelik, Nuri Aras, Savaş Saymaz, Mehmet Arda, Remzi Mehmetoğlu, Ruken Çelik, Murat Derince and Devrim Durucan.
