Irfan Bayar, a municipal worker in Kastamonu province and a former soldier who was wounded in a clash with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1997, committed suicide after an investigation was launched against him for sending his kid to a private school affiliated with the Gulen movement.

According to a Kronos online news outlet report, Turkey’s main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) member, Yildirim Kaya, said that Bayar shot himself dead in a car on Thursday during a press conference parked in front of his workplace on October 27.

Bayar tried to register his son Efe to a private school in downtown Kastamonu but was denied the request due to overcapacity. Efe ended up in a Gulen movement-affiliated school in 2011, Kaya said.

“Irfan Kaya was summoned to Ankara for interrogation as part of an investigation two weeks ago. He told the inspector overseeing the interrogation: ‘I sent my son to that school with the help of the government quota [for veteran soldiers]. I have no links and affiliation [ to the Movement].” Kaya said Bayar killed himself over the disappointment that the government considered himself linked to the Movement.

Turkish government accuses the Movement of instigating a failed coup on July 15, 2016, a claim the Movement strongly denies.

Nearly 130,000 people have passed through custody, and 60,000 have been remanded in prison over alleged links to the Gulen movement since the summer of 2016. Prosecutors claim that sending children to Gulen-linked schools, depositing money into the now-defunct Bank Asya, subscribing to Zaman newspaper and similar outlets, and using the ByLock mobile app are signs of affiliation to the Movement.

Source:

https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-municipal-worker-commits-suicide-following-investigation-over-gulen-links/