Nazife Onay, one of thousands of teachers who were expelled from their posts by government decrees in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, has announced that she will begin a hunger strike demanding her reinstatement to her job.
Onay, a teacher of 11 years, has been staging a sit-in in front of the Cevahir Shopping Mall in İstanbul’s Şişli district for 55 days.
The teacher announced on Thursday that she would begin a hunger strike and continue her protest on Ankara’s Yüksel Street, where two educators, Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça, who were also removed from their posts by government decrees, had been standing vigil while on a hunger strike.
Gülmen and Özakça were arrested on May 23 on terror charges.
Gülmen was fired from Konya Selçuk University for her alleged ties to the Gülen movement. Özakça was a teacher at a primary school in Turkey’s eastern province of Mardin before he was purged over ties to a terrorist organization.
The two protested for months in the same area of Ankara before they started their hunger strike. Both have been detained several times due to their protests.
Thousands of academics and teachers have been removed from their jobs since the July 15 coup attempt as part of a post-coup purge launched by the government under the pretext of an anti-coup fight.