Selçuk Kozağaçlı, the lawyer of the two recently arrested educators who are on hunger strike for over 78 days, disproved the allegations of the ministers of interior and foreign affairs of Turkey, accusing them of being ‘terrorists’. The lawyer shared the criminal record of the two educators and a court decision of the academician Nuriye Gülmen on his Twitter account.
The Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, in a speech, accused the two educators Semih Özakça and Nuriye Gülmen of being ‘terrorists’ saying ‘We don’t send our children to schools to be trained as terrorists…. It’s written in all records that she [Nuriye Gülmen] was a part of DHKP-C’s [Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, an outlawed leftist group] network in public sector and she was in the revolutionary group of public workers.’
However, the official documents shared by the lawyer Selçuk Kozağaçlı rapidly confuted the Minister. Following the accusations, Kozağaçlı has shared on his Twitter account the decision of a lawsuit that took place during 2012-2013 about the academician Nuriye Gülmen stating that she had been acquitted. The court decision had not even been appealed by the attorney generalship. Kozağaçlı has also shared two recent official documents that prove that the two educators have no criminal records by May 17, 2017.
The Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had also accused two educators of being ‘terrorists’. He had said ‘Whoever supports terror groups will have action taken against them.’ The smear campaign of the two ministers against the two educators was defeated by official documents proving their innocence.
Esra Özakça, the wife of the teacher Semih Özakça, has written on her Twitter account that the Interior Minister Süleyman had violated the presumption of innocence and he was responsible for whatever will happen to them. She said that they would file a criminal complaint against the allegations.
Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday demanded up to 20 years in jail on terror charges for two educators who protest their dismissal by the AKP government in a purge after last year's failed coup.
