DHAKA: The Turkish government has suspended 11,285 teachers over suspected links to outlawed Kurdish fighters.

The move on Thursday came as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey was conducting its largest ever operation against PKK fighters in the country’s southeast, reports the Al Jazeera.

“We will be removing civil servants with links to the PKK,” Erdogan said at a governors’ meeting in Ankara. [This] is a key element of our fight against them.”

A total of 11,285 personnel “linked to a separatist-terrorist organization have been suspended”, Turkey’s education ministry said on its official Twitter account on Thursday (September 8).

The teachers suspended for their alleged links to the PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, will be able to receive two thirds of their salaries until the end of a formal investigation.

Turkey regards the PKK as a ‘terrorist’ organization.

The autonomy-seeking group abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

The government has accused the PKK of a series of attacks in the southeast of Turkey in recent weeks.

BDST: 1150 HRS, SEP 09, 2016
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