Rights activists say PM must stop the practice of staff being punished for political beliefs. Jon Gorvett reports

The Turkish teachers’ union Egitim Sen is calling on prime minister Bulent Ecevit to end the punishment of teachers for “thought crimes”.

In the past year alone, 102 teachers have been dismissed or “exiled” for things they have said.

Turkey has been told it must improve its record on human rights if it wants to join the European Union.

At present, teachers who fall foul of the state-run Public Employees Tribunal are sent to teach on the other side of the country, or to schools considered difficult or even dangerous.

Iltar Tekince, a secondary teacher from Istanbul, said: “A teacher known to be leftist might be exiled to a school in an area run by ultra right-wing Turkish nationalists. Sometimes, the teachers never come back.”

Union officials cited cases of exiled teachers in the south-east who had disappeared, been beaten up or in some cases killed by paramilitary forces, a claim the Government denies. It blames the deaths on Kurdish guerrillas.

Of the 102 staff punished in the past 12 months, 95 have been exiled, while the remaining seven were fired or banned from working in any public-sector job again.

To protest against this, Egitim Sen held a 250-mile march on October 5 which was World Teachers’ Day. But the governor of Ankara, where the march was to end, banned the demonstration. This resulted in clashes with police outside the union’s headquarters in Ankara .

Alaattin Dincer, general director of Egitim Sen, said the ban showed little had changed since parliament passed a package of human rights reforms in August to try to meet EU requirements.

“We haven’t seen anything positive happening since then,” he said. “It will take time. There are 650 laws still in place in this country that were brought in after the military coup in September 1980. The law on exiling and punishing teachers is one of them. Until these are removed, nothing will change.”

Teachers have been punished for “crimes” including speaking out in favour of Kurdish language education for the country’s 12-million-strong Kurdish minority.

Another major crime is “affecting the struggle against terrorism in a negative fashion”. Under this, teachers from the south-eastern town of Mardin were redeployed for handing out carnations on International Women’s Day, while the entire union branch in nearby Sirt was exiled for backing mother-tongue education for Kurdish children.

After the protest march, Mr Dincer met education ministry officials, who promised to raise the issue with prime minister Ecevit. The union is planning another day of action on November 24.