The following article was originally published in Independent.
In the centre of where various pedestrian cobble stone streets meet, in the hip and relatively progressive suburb of Kadıköy, Istanbul, Serdar Bascitin sits with a humble smile, surrounded by posters displaying his cause.
Bascitin and the people surrounding him are showing their support for their friends in Ankara, who started the hunger strike at the start of March. “We want the government to hear our voice so they can return our friends to their jobs and they can finish the hunger strike,” Bascitin said, clearly worried about his friend’s health. “It is at a very critical point.”
After the coup in July 2016, the Turkish state enforced a state of emergency and issued a decree enabling nearly 150,000 people to be fired from their jobs. Since the 16 April referendum this year, President Recep Erdoğan gained greater parliamentary powers enabling an extra 4,000 people to be dismissed.
Those fired are supposedly connected with terrorist organisations. Though, as Amnesty International Turkey researcher Andrew Gardener, mentions, there is no “individual justification or any evidence presented”.
Bascitin used to be a research assistant at a university in Erzincan before he was fired on 29 October, 2016. He said the government has paid no notice of the hunger strike’s message, “instead they have attacked the area and arrested people.”
Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça are the remaining two teachers still on hunger strike, despite being in prison. On July 31, and the 144th day of no food, the pair were forcibly taken to the prison’s hospital.
Bascitin believes he was fired as he was one of the Academics for Peace who signed a proclamation against the civilian killings in the east of Turkey. “We wanted them to stop because little babies and women were being killed in great numbers. We have nothing to do with the coup and they know this,” Bascitin said, compassionately.
Gardener explains the Turkish state doesn’t draw a line between legitimate and illegitimate oppositions to the government. “The story of Turkey is this massive intolerance of dissent,” he said.
For many of the people fired, it is more than just a job for them. “I miss being with my students; I love them. Teaching is what I was raised for and this is what I want to do for my whole life and now I’m doing nothing,” Bascitin expresses.
A change of pace
While Bascitin needed to move back in with his family as he couldn’t afford rent, Serap Kılıç doesn’t have this option. “I’m afraid I will be blamed for being one of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] or a supporter of Fetullah Gülen (accused by the government of orchestrating the coup),” she said.
Kılıç explained that many people she knows couldn’t return to their families because they wouldn’t accept them. So instead, she stayed in the east. “My adventure starts in Diyarbakir,” Kılıç said, with a radiating face.