Education and Science Workers' Union

Members of Turkey's parliament at a meeting at the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, 2 January 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR

The bill was passed by the votes of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP and by MPs from his far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP.

A Maarif school in Sarajevo, Bosnia, continues education during the pandemic. Photo: Maarif Schools Sarajevo

The presidential decree hiking the Maarif Foundation budget was published in the Official Gazette on Thursday. Its annual budget is now 1.23 billion lira, or about 140 million euros. This money will come from the general budget of the Education Ministry, MEB.

The total number of child workers, aged 15-17, were 708,000 in 2016, slightly lower than the 716,000 in the previous year, according to a report prepared by the Education and Science Workers' Union (Eğitim-Sen) for National Sovereignty and Children's Day on April 23, the anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Parliament. 

The provincial Directorate of Family and Social Policies has opened an investigation after photos emerged of kindergarten children wearing bridal clothes and veils in the Aegean province of Uşak, Doğan News Agency has reported. 

Photos of children aged between 4 and 5 wearing bridal clothes and veils stirred outrage among Turkish social media users after emerging on May 17.

A court in the southern province of Antalya has ruled that compulsory religion classes are "openly against the law," following a complaint filed by an atheist family. 

An atheist family applied to court in order to exempt their child, identified only by the initials as E.D., from compulsory religion classes, Doğan News Agency reported on March 15.

Kocaeli, Turkey (dpa) - About 100 students cram into this room in the city of Kocaeli, some 100 kilometres east of Istanbul, to hear a social sciences lecture by Guven Bakirezer.

The venue belongs to Egitim-Sen - the left-wing Education and Science Workers' Union, which is critical of the conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP)-ruled government.

Public workers with suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) will be dismissed, Labor and Social Policies Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu has announced. 

Statements they share on Twitter will also be evaluated as a criterion in order to determine if they are linked to the outlawed group, he said. 

An investigation has been launched into 4,900 teachers who participated in a work stoppage action in December 2015 in the southeastern province of Diyarbak?r, where clashes between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces have continued for months. 

An Istanbul court ordered the release of four Turkish academics on April 22 on the first hearing of a trial opened against them for making  "terrorist propaganda" when they read out a joint petition in January signed by over 1000 colleagues calling on the government to end the security operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

A prosecutor in a case into four academics who were accused of spreading "terrorist propaganda" in signing a peace petition has asked for their release during a hearing on April 23.