Women stand with teacher probed for 'snow woman'

2015-04-08 11:01:29

NEWS DESK (DİHA) - Educational workers demonstrated against what they called the "absurd investigation" of a fellow educational worker who made a snow woman in Maraş. The charges against educational worker Çilem Sakine Coşkun called the snow woman an affront to "social values."

Educational workers marched in the southern Turkish city of Maraş against the investigation of educational worker Çilem Sakine Coşkun, who is under investigation for making a relatively biologically accurate snow woman with her students over the winter. Union educators in Maraş have had repeated problems with the oppressive AKP government recently. Halil Serkan Öz, an educator and previous local representative of the educators' union Eğitim-Sen, suffered a heart attack in the wake of personal attacks and insults by Selim Cebiroğlu, the AKP governor in the northwestern Turkey province of Yalova. 

"Neither nature itself nor the snow sculptures we made with our own students are part of your perverted worldview," said Hülya Yalçın Orak, who succeeded her colleague Halil after his heart attack and is now the local Eğitim-Sen Representative, at a solidarity demonstration with Çilem. "As women of Eğitim-Sen, we will keep threatening your masculine tyranny everywhere we go," she said. She called for an immediate apology to Çilem. "Otherwise, we women—who are not made of rain or snow but flesh and blood—will tear down this masculine world.

Women at the march chanted "long live women's solidarity." Representatives from local unions and several political parties (including the CHP, HDP and ESP) also showed up in support.

(cm/nt)