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Due to World Teachers’ Day, teachers exposed to immigration from Turkey and started their teaching careers again in the Netherlands shared their stories in the program.
Many teachers who sought asylum in the Netherlands attended the meeting, which took place in the Broken Chalk Foundation’s Sara Burgerhart Activiteitencentrum (SBAC) conference hall in Amsterdam. Speaking at the panel moderated by the Dutch writer James Roolvink, Broken Chalk Foundation Co-Chair Ramazan İnce said that there have been many human rights violations in the last five years in Turkey and that everyone who is against the government of President Erdoğan, or anyone who is against him, has been declared a terrorist.
İnce gave the following information: “There are serious human rights violations against our educator friends living in Turkey. Life is getting harder for them every day. We must do something for them. We cannot continue with our lives by forgetting them. Therefore, we founded the Broken Chalk foundation. After the failed coup attack, the Turkish government has shut down more than a thousand private schools by statutory decree-laws in the last five years. According to the data collected by the National Education Union (Egitim-Sen), the government banned 41005 teachers from the profession, and their teaching certificates were revoked. These teachers cannot do their job. In addition, 16 universities were closed while 56000 students continued their higher education on the campuses, and 5342 people lost their jobs, among 2465 of which were academicians. All of this was done with the statutory decree by the AKP government. Broken Chalk reports on human rights abuses in education. We present our reports to the human rights organizations of the United Nations and the European Union. Broken Chalk organizes street protests to attract public attention and put pressure on governments. It publishes press releases about rights violations in the field of education.”
HUSNA JALAL FROM AFGAN KABUL TURKISH SCHOOL: I WANT TO BE THE VOICE OF AFGAN WOMEN
Husna Jalal, a graduate of the Afghan Turkish School in Kabul, who had to leave Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country on the 15th of August, said, “Life has changed drastically after 15th of August for Afghan men and women. The young professional Afghans left the country, Afghans are starving and Afghanistan is now on the countdown of catastrophe without the support of the international community. I want to amplify Afghan women voices in Europe.” she said.
AUTHOR JAMES ROOLVINK: NETHERLANDS WON IN EDUCATION FIELD, TURKEY LOST
James Roolvink, the moderator of the Broken Chalk World Teachers’ Day program, said that it is significant for teachers who sought asylum in the Netherlands after the fictional coup to learn Dutch in a short time and start a new life. James Roolvink said: “For two hours, I got together with Ramazan İnce, Fatih OK, Zeynep Efil, Burhan Kasap, Kadir Tan, and Husna Jalal, teachers who work in different schools and jobs in different cities of the Netherlands. I want to say that the Netherlands won and Turkey lost. Because there is a shortage of 12000 teachers in the Netherlands, most refugees must be teachers in the Netherlands. I was together with seven teachers in the Broken Chalk program. We spent a conducive and successful two hours with them on my completely Dutch educational system without a translator. I am sure they will create a different situation for the Dutch education system. Especially their self-confidence and speaking Dutch without an accent were extremely impressive. I want to say that it was a very successful program for me personally. I wish these teachers success in their new lives.”
ŞAHİN: WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE NETHERLANDS?
Stating that she came to the Netherlands 3 years ago, Neslihan Özcan Şahin said, “I was a science teacher. I had to seek asylum in the Netherlands for political reasons. After my extended stay at the asylum, we got home. I applied to the teaching project of the Municipality of Amsterdam. Then I completed this training. I got the right to work as a teaching assistant in the Netherlands. I have started teaching in Amsterdam at the high school level in the Netherlands. The Dutch people are amazed. Because you cannot do many things about language learning during the camp. We did not have a course. It took too long to get a residence permit. We came to the Netherlands for freedom. This country gave us our freedom. Now, we have only one aim is what can we do for this country and people. We discussed how we could help and be helpful in the Dutch education system in the Broken Chalk World Teachers’ Day program. I believe that every student has very different intelligence.
KASAP: I HAVE READ AND LISTENED TO MANY BOOKS IN THE NETHERLANDS. I RENEWED MYSELF
Burhan Kasap said that he took part in the Dutch Education system with a project he participated in. Dutch is a complex language. I followed language studies and courses closely for three years. I met with Dutch friends. I tried to read and listen to a lot of Dutch books. This is how I shortened my language barrier. I will now start working at a school in Den Haag city. Here we are trying to hold on to life. I came here for political reasons. We want to contribute something to Dutch society. I want to thank the Broken Chalk Foundation for giving us this opportunity. It has been a very effective program for me. We want to make severe contributions by using the chances that the Netherlands has offered for us. This was a start. I hope there will be more new programs in the future.
TAN: IT WAS A PLEASURE FOR ME TO LEARN THE DUTCH LANGUAGE
Kadir Tan learned the Dutch language in a short period of 3 years and started working as a French teacher in the Dutch education system. He said, “I am first involved in the Dutch education system as a French education assistant. Since I was a foreign language teacher in Turkey, I had sympathy for foreigners. I was doing my best to make my students love the foreign language French. It was my pleasure to learn the Dutch language. I learned Dutch not as an obligation but as pleasure while learning. It’s a bit of a challenge due to my age. I will be happy to teach French to my students in the Netherlands because the Dutch government gave me this opportunity. I want to teach in my country, but it was not fortunate. I am not angry with anyone.
I look forward to meeting my students with excitement. I learned that there is a tremendous teacher shortage in the Netherlands. In this respect, I fully believe that new young teachers will make an earnest contribution to the Dutch education system.”
OK: I AM TEACHING ENGLISH AT A HIGH SCHOOL
Fatih OK, who has been in the Netherlands for five years, described the process of starting teaching as follows: “It took a long time to take our place in the Dutch education system. After I learned the language, I started applying for jobs, and I got a job at a school in Hengelo, Netherlands. I continued to teach English in high school. I am pretty happy with my life right now.
Meanwhile, Broken Chalk organized an excellent program in the capital city of Amsterdam. In the program, we had the opportunity to share our experiences. Moderator James Roolvink asked us some good questions, and I found the program very useful for education. Hopefully, we can continue.”
İNCE: THE TURKISH EMBASSY DID NOT RENEW OUR PASSPORT
Ramazan İnce, who came to the Netherlands 3.5 years ago and said: “Our children were born in Nigeria. We were happy living in Africa. We had no problems with people in Africa. All people loved us. Now I would like to explain why we are in the Netherlands. And why we sought asylum here and why we left our family and friends behind. Our children’s passports were about to expire. The Turkish embassy did not renew our children’s passports. Then my wife’s and my passports were revoked. You may wonder why this is because the school where I worked belonged to the Gülen Movement. The AKP government under President Erdogan declared the Gülen Movement a terrorist organization. For this reason, our passports were canceled, and our children’s passports were not renewed. The AKP government is kidnapping teachers all over the world. The interior ministry said that Turkish national intelligence had kidnapped more than 100 teachers from 18 different countries. We could not get visas to other countries. If you work with the schools of the Gulen movement, you cannot get a visa. We had no other choice. Our children’s passports were only valid for three months. We had to do something before the passports expired. We tried to go to Romania via Amsterdam with KLM. It worked. We arrived in Schiphol and waited to miss our next flight. Then we went to the police in Amsterdam Schipol and sought asylum. The waiting time in the asylum centers was very long. I should do something. I sent many emails to schools. But unfortunately, I always received a negative response. They said ‘sorry’ because I did not have a residence permit. I tried to take Dutch lessons, but it was costly for me. I have completed three different IT courses. These were Data Science, Full Stack Web Developer, and Microsoft Azure Cloud Engineer. After my education, I did my internship at Fujitsu. Fortunately, Fujitsu offered me a permanent contract. And now I have been working as a systems engineer at Fujitsu for over a year.”
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