More than two years after they were arbitrarily dismissed, according to Amnesty International, nearly 130,000 Turkish government employees are still waiting for justice.
“Their future is uncertain”, says the human rights organization in the new report ‘Purged beyond return? No remedy for Turkey’s dismissed public-sector workers’. “Tens of thousands of people who were branded as “terrorists” and lost their livelihoods, who saw their professional and family life destroyed, are still waiting for justice,” says Andrew Gardner of Amnesty International.
“Shameful mockery of every sense of justice”
“Despite the obvious arbitrariness of the dismissals, the committee that has to assess the decisions does not succeed in complying with the international standards and, in fact, limits itself to approving the originally unjust decisions. This whole process is a shameful mockery of every sense of justice.”
The human rights organization recalls that under the state of emergency since the coup attempt in 2016, almost 130,000 public sector employees were arbitrarily dismissed in implementation of implementing decrees. In January 2017, the government set up the inquiry committee.
“On 5 October 2018, that committee had handled only 36,000 cases of the total of approximately 125,000 requests it had received from dismissed people. In just 2,300 cases (less than 7 percent of the cases handled), the committee annulled the original decision to resign,” Amnesty said, evaluating the committee’s procedures and 109 of its statements in the report. The human rights organization also interviewed 21 discarded people and their families.
“Slow, weak commission that is not independent”
According to the human rights organization, the committee was not set up to really find a solution. She is also not independent, slow and the committee uses weak evidence. “People who want to challenge their dismissal within the committee have little chance to do so”, it stated.
The human rights organization also points out that the employees in the public sector who are recommissioned often end up in a worse position than before their dismissal.
