On May 22, Turkish social media was rocked by a picture of a woman being kicked and dragged on the street by police officers. The woman was the mother of scholar Veli Sacilik, who was standing in solidarity with Nuriye Gulmen and Semih Ozakca, teachers who are on a hunger strike.

Sacilik, just like Gulmen and Ozakca, was dismissed from his government position without any explanation or due process after the July 15 coup attempt. Indeed, currently there are more than 100,000 government employees who were dismissed. Amnesty International succinctly described the process as “professional annihilation.”

Gulmen started a sit-in in front of a statue in the heart of Ankara. The sit-in has now turned into the Yuksel Resistance (for its location on Yuksel Street, which is closed to car traffic) with a heavy police presence and blocked-off streets. The statue, which was erected in the 1990s, is of a woman sitting and reading a human rights declaration. Ankara-based journalist Unsal Unlu said that over the years this statue has been exposed to the highest amount of gas due to protests.

Gulmen started sitting in front of this monument all alone on Nov. 9, 2016, with a sign that read “I want my job back.” She was taken into custody almost every day for months along with Ozakca, Sacilik and a few others.