Teachers walk out of every public school in Northern Cyprus as protest coninue

Turkish Cypriot teachers walked out of every public school in north Cyprus on Wednesday as protests continue against the government's handling of education in light of a canceled attempt to legalise the wearing of hijabs by schoolchildren last month.

The protest was led by the Irsen Kucuk middle school in Lefkosa, where Cyprus Turkish secondary education teachers’ union (Ktoeos) leader Selma Eylem read out a prepared statement in which she decried the state of education in north Cyprus.

She spoke of having to teach more than 40 children at a time in portacabins, about how many children do not speak Turkish, and about the long hours teachers spend marking work and doing work outside of their normal teaching duties due to staff shortages elsewhere in schools.

Additionally, she criticised how “our books and curricula have been changed”, but that despite this, teachers “strive to provide pupils with an egalitarian, free, scientific education and to guide them in line with Ataturk’s principles”.

She went on to say that teachers’ rights have been “degraded”, and that teachers will continue to fight for “contemporary, secular, scientific education”.

“We will never compromise on scientific and secular education, on Ataturk’s principles, for our country, for our environment, for our society, for our children, and for our future. We will continue to fight for bright and beautiful days,” she said.

The protest comes two days after TRNC president Ersin Tatar had demanded that legal action be taken against teachers who “disturbed our peace” during earlier protests, saying that he would meet with TRNC police chief Kasim Kuni and chief public prosecutor Sarper Altincik and “request that legal steps be taken”.

Teachers had staged a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Lefkosa last Tuesday, with trade unions pointing their fingers at the Turkish embassy as what they believed to be the source of the amendment which briefly legalised the wearing of hijabs in schools in north Cyprus.

The government had withdrawn the amendment on Tuesday morning, but teachers were keen to show their displeasure at the amendment and their view that the embassy had played a role.