YÖN/FİKRET BİLÂ Private sector teachers held a protest in Ankara. They demanded improvements in their employment rights and the removal of unscientific interviews during hiring. Police intervened against the teachers. They forced the teachers to the ground, tied their arms behind their backs, and pressed their knees on their backs.
They detained many teachers, including Eren Edebali, President of the Private Sector Teachers' Union, and Kemal Irmak, President of Eğitim-Sen. They forced a 60-year-old teacher with white hair face down, tied his hands behind his back, pressed their knees on his waist and back, and took him away. Is this how a teacher should be treated? Teaching is one of the most sacred professions.
A teacher is the person who deserves the most respect in society and should be stood up for when seen. The teacher is the one who teaches you to read and write. They are your source of knowledge. By teaching you to read and write, they enable you to understand the world, access information, develop yourself, protect you, and guide you. Therefore, regardless of age, a teacher is your elder who deserves the utmost respect.
Do you know how many students the 60-year-old teacher you forced to the ground and pressed on his back and waist with your knee has educated? Didn’t the teachers who raised the police officer who treated him this way also raise his superiors? Didn’t teachers educate the governor, the police chief, and the interior minister? Aren’t you a professional thanks to them? Don’t those who took to the streets demanding better employment rights for teachers bear any responsibility?
Don’t you have anything to say to them? Is a teacher a terrorist, a bandit, or a murderer that you force them to the ground, press on them, and detain them? Of course, every profession is sacred, but aren’t your teachers the ones who enabled you to acquire that profession? Without those teachers, could you be a police officer, governor, minister, doctor, judge, prosecutor, lawyer, engineer, or professor?
Is such treatment acceptable for teachers who should be treated with utmost respect? The mistreatment of teachers in Ankara is a disgraceful picture for Turkey. Can a country that cannot tolerate even one teacher truly speak of democracy, law, human rights, and freedoms? Certainly not.
