TURKEY
Turkey’s former Public Servants, dismissed from their jobs during the two years of emergency rule that followed the 2016 failed coup, are having to face financial consequences that go beyond losing a stable job.
It seems that many officials, fanatically loyal to the Government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have made further punishing of sacked Public Servants in daily life a mission for themselves after the failed putsch.
More than 130,000 people lost their jobs via subsequent Government decrees following the coup attempt, but the real number of people who were directly affected could be as high as 250,000.
This figure includes contract-based workers, who found themselves jobless after the Government shut down some universities and private schools and closed military academies over claimed links to a religious group called the Gülen Movement, which the Government says was behind the coup.
One of the affected former bureaucrats, Levent Mazılıgüney (pictured) described his status as “civilian death” since being banned from the public sector.
He said many former officials were prevented from things like buying a house, applying for insurance compensation in case of an accident or opening a bank account.
Recently the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency overturned the appeal of a doctor who complained that a bank refused to open an account for him on the grounds that the doctor was sacked from the Public Service after the failed putsch.
The Agency said the banks had the freedom to choose the people they would accept as clients.
After a car accident, an insurance company declined to pay compensation to a client who was dismissed by the Government decree.
In a further example, another former Public Servant in the western Province of Izmir could not sell his house as the local Land Registry Office said there was a risk decision that had been imposed by authorities on the registry documents of the flat,
Mr Mazılıgüney said arbitrary treatment of dismissed Public Servants was particularly widespread in the private sector.
“People who try to establish their own businesses are not granted a licence or employers that consider employing such people are told by authorities that their businesses might face problems as a result,” Mr Mazılıgüney said.
“People can’t even retire, because their pensions are not paid,” he said.
Ankara, 26 January 2020
