Gulen movement's youngest victims speak out in Turkey

Since the failed coup last month, drastic changes in Turkey have become mundane. But at least 4,000 students are expected to be affected by a July 31 emergency decree to close all military high schools and military academies. The four military high schools were highly competitive to enter and graduate from. Most of them were established during the Ottoman era, representing a 200-year-old legacy.

The schools are being closed because the government believes that they have been infiltrated by the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO) and that about 95% of the student body identifies with FETO. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is convinced these schools cannot be rehabilitated.

Indeed, there has been news about stolen entry exam questions not only for military schools but also for several government institutions at a systemic level for a decade or so. More victims of FETO have been coming out every day in Turkey since the July 15 coup failed.

One of the youngest group of victims are those who were coerced to leave military schools after suffering years of bullying and discrimination at the hands of FETO-member superiors. Since 2006, these students have organized themselves under the banner "Platform of Dismissed and Discharged Students from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)." They have been struggling to raise awareness of “mobbing,” or bullying by crowds, and they demand that their reputations be restored. In addition, as they were discharged or dismissed from state-owned military schools, these students were required to pay heavy fines of 10,000 to 70,000 Turkish liras (roughly $3,000 to $23,000), depending on how many years of schooling they received.