Tamer Çağlar taught history and the History of the Turkish Revolution and Kemalism at a high school in Gebze, Kocaeli, and served as the workplace representative of the Eğitim-İş union. On 14 September 2026, the first day of the 2026–27 school year, he was called out of a lesson to the principal’s office and handed the decision dismissing him from the profession.

He said afterwards that he had two more lessons that day and offered to teach them, but was told politely to leave. Writing on social media, he said he had been put out of the door of the school he had entered alone, alone again, after 21 years. Reports in August had described his service as 20 years.

The decision was taken by the Education Ministry’s High Disciplinary Board. Çağlar gave his defence before the Board on 26 August 2026 and announced the outcome at the end of that month. The decision was served on him more than two weeks later.

Çağlar says social media posts were placed in the disciplinary file. The Board’s full reasoning has not been published, so it cannot be established from the public record what the dismissal rests on.

According to his own account, the process began earlier. He says investigations were opened against him after he set up an “Atatürk corner” in his classroom and spoke publicly in defence of secular, scientific, public, coeducational and free education. In March 2026 he was transferred to a school in Karamürsel, 85 kilometres away, which he described as a banishment. His union branch publicly criticised the transfer at the time. The Kocaeli provincial education director, Emrullah Aydın, said the transfer had nothing to do with the Atatürk corner.

The Education Ministry has not commented publicly on the dismissal.

A public employee was removed from a profession he had held for two decades by a decision whose reasons remain unpublished, and the removal was carried out in front of his class.