User:GGT/Targeting of education by the PKK

The PKK has systematically carried out killings of school teachers and burned school buildings. This led to the deaths of 90 school teachers in southeastern Turkey between 1984 and 1995 according to an Amnesty International report. These killings were particularly concentrated in the Diyarbakır Province and Tunceli Province between 1993 and 1995, but took place in other provinces at other times as well. The justification for such killings was that the teachers had been collaborating with the state security forces. Often the only non-locals in their communities besides the security forces, teachers had to travel to their assigned schools in the company of security forces. In a particular instance on 14 April 1990, PKK militants raided a teachers' residence in the vilage of Bükardı in Elazığ Province, forcing teachers and their spouses outside and opening fire with automatic weapons, killing five people. By the end of 1993, 700 schools were closed in Diyarbakır Province alone due to PKK attacks on teachers and school buildings. Such attacks continued in the 2010s. According to a report by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack in 2018, PKK activities included abduction of teachers, planting and detonating bombs in schoolyards and nurseries, launching Molotov cocktails at schools, setting fires to schools and dormitories. The PKK confirmed in 2017 that it had abducted and killed a schoolteacher in a village in Tunceli Province.