Letter of CHP MP in Turkey to PM about two educators on hunger strike
On the 113th day of the hunger strike of Turkey’s dismissed and jailed educators Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça, main opposition party CHP’s Bursa MP Dr. Ceyhun İrgil wrote a letter to the Prime Minsiter Binali Yıldırım and Minister of National Education İsmet Yılmaz.
Also a doctor and a member of the parliamentary committee on education, MP İrgil emphasized the critical health conditions of both educators and called on the PM and the education minister to first ‘admit the fact that the lives of these two young people depend on the government’ and to step up to prevent them from dying or having irreversable health complications as a result of their prolonged hunger.
MP İrgil started out his letter by saying, ‘I am writing this letter as a father, as a doctor, and as a human’ and added: “We are – and, actually you are - at a very critical stage... I hope that you do not see this letter of mine as a political approach. I am writing with the belief that you, too, are people with conscious... I know that you have received thousands of calls and requests (in this regard). But I am telling you as a doctor that the injustices faced by Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça and their hunger strike are going through critical days...
The two educators, who have been claimed by the Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu as ‘members of terrorist organization’ although their ‘criminal record histories’ are completely clear, have been kept in detention for over a month due to their ‘potential to cause massive public action’ – a rather strange accusation for being kept in jail…”
Asking the PM and the education minister ‘how they will be able to bear the burden of having caused innocent people to lose their lives or to have left with lifelong health complications’, MP İrgil said: “No ifs and buts, the lives of these two people now are in your hands”.
Noting that several other dismissed people have been returned to their jobs through the ‘favoring’ of the government and so many others are being tried without arrest, İrgil asserted that ‘the government’s interference in judiciary is obvious’.
The MP called on the two educators to be released, returned to their jobs, and tried without arrest and signed his letter by writing, ‘on behalf of many people who do not want anyone to die like this and who do not want any parents to go through the pain of lose of a child.’
Source: https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/chp-li-irgil-den-gulmen-ve-ozakca-icin-acik-mektup-167534.html