ALL she did was pick up the phone to a TV call-in show.

But last month Ayse Celik was sent to jail to continue serving a 15-month sentence — which had been delayed because she was pregnant and then had a newborn baby.

Her child is currently staying with her mother while she serves her sentence. But the first time round, the schoolteacher was among 700 women in her country to serve their sentences accompanied by their children — in spite of this violating human rights legislation and the constitution. 

But this is Turkey, where teachers have been on the receiving end of extraordinary government repression — and where teachers are also central to the fightback.

Ozgur Bozdgan, the international secretary of Turkish educators’ union Egitim-Sen, knows a thing or two about this. 

Last month he and union president Feray Aytekin Aydogan joined hundreds of British and Irish teachers in Belfast at NASUWT conference — where in 2016 Egitim-Sen received the NASUWT’s international solidarity award. 

Turkey, Bozdgan says, is once again in a state of flux following the recent municipal elections, in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) sustained a surprise defeat. 

“The political hegemony of the Erdogan government has started to collapse,” says Bozdgan.

“Now the discussion here is whether the Erdogan government will go on [in] its political life as it used to be, for 16 years, or whether something will change in Turkey.

“Turkey is on the edge of passing into a different situation, climate and political future.”

But for now, he stresses, there is little sign of immediate retreat. A failed coup attempt mounted by an army faction in 2016 was followed by a state of emergency. 

This officially ended in July 2018, yet many aspects of the crackdown on dissent have continued, according to Bozdgan.

“Some law changes were made during the state of emergency, and the government took all the power and tools to itself — and it’s using it as if we are still in a state of emergency.

“They still have the right to shut down trade unions. They still have the right to close newspapers. Still people are being dismissed from their jobs.”

Celik’s supposed crime, in Bozdgan’s view, was “to give a message for peace.” But the reaction will inevitably have a chilling effect across the education sector. 

“If you live in a country in which teachers and professors are imprisoned for expressing ideas, it creates another situation for teachers in the classroom. You come across teachers who are afraid of expressing the basic truth, who are afraid of expressing the most important issues about a country.”

Thousands of other teachers, many of whom are Egitim-Sen members, were laid off in the aftermath of the coup. The government subsequently set up a commission to vet applications for reinstatement — which allowed only 2.5 per cent of them back into the fold.

“From the beginning we tried to emphasise that this commission is not a real [independent] commission,” Bozdgan says. “It’s not sufficient, it’s not enough.”

But he says the dismissals only began to be discussed in the public sphere after the high-profile hunger strike of two teachers, Nuriye Gulmen and Semih Ozakca. 

“That was their personal choice, it was not an organised action,” Bozdgan stresses. But it had a huge impact on the discussion, and it stands within a strong political tradition in the country of taking this kind of action.

Dismissals, though, are far from the only industrial issue concerning Egitim-Sen. The teacher recruitment process has changed significantly. 

“It is not possible to be recognised as a teacher if you’re opposing the government,” explains Bozdgan. “After you’ve passed all of these processes, you are being employed temporarily. It’s a casualisation of the profession, they are trying to have control.”

This has been coupled with a series of parallel reforms. The removal of evolution from the curriculum got a fair deal of coverage in the international press, but the union official says this is “only one part.” 

Another aspect is the new teachers’ law, which he says “is trying to construct the teacher’s profile in accordance with the reference of political Islam or whatever.”

The government has taken more direct control of the teacher education system. 

“They reconstructed the courses in the universities, and they reconstructed the faculty.” 

And there has also been a shift in the co-operation between education institutions and religious groups and foundations, Bozdgan says. 

“These are all separated herrings in the changing process of education.”

Does Bozdgan worry that the education system is perpetuating the continuation of Erdogan’s regime?

It’s not just about winning elections in the short term, he argues, but a wider reshaping of Turkish society. 

“In each and every country around the world, governments are using education as a tool for transferring their government’s ideological point of view.

“For that reason Erdogan and his government are trying to use education like this for building a regime. The objective is that the regime will be [established] in 2023, in the hundredth year of the foundation of the [Turkish] republic. They are trying to build a new regime dominated by political Islam, privatisation and neoliberal policies.”

But perhaps it’s not as inevitable as it once looked. “On the day of the municipal elections and the following day people were celebrating a couple of days till the morning,” Bozdgan recalls. “Because you know, the period of authoritarian regime, we believe that is over, and Turkey will be reconstructed.”

How so? “We believe a new Turkey based on freedom and equality will be started. In fact, a discussion will start first. And we will see what will happen.”

Egitim-Sen, for its part, is “starting collective action again” with an escalating series of demonstrations in the next few months. And though the government has targeted trade unions, Bozdgan says “there are no legal ways to stop us from striking. And if that happens, we will accept it as a violation of trade union rights.”

But might the government realise the danger and moderate its own policies? “Of course this discussion will also affect Erdogan’s government and its policies, and now Erdogan’s government is trying to keep people on side.”

Perhaps this could help create the “more normalised situation” which Bozdgan believes is an essential ingredient in turning a discussion to a mobilisation for change. “If [the situation] is not normal, we cannot discuss it in a rational way.

“Erdogan was trying to keep Turkey in two different parts, and he thought the big part was supporting him. A divided Turkey is good for him. We started to observe nearly two or three years ago, or four years ago, that people are starting to change their minds, their policies … the opposition political parties will get the elections, that was visible. People want to live together, they don’t want to live apart.”