August 17, 2014

Deceased Mongolian teacher becomes Twitter trending topic

Mongolian teacher Galimbek Sharivkhan, who died in a car accident in South Africa on Saturday, has become a trending topic on Twitter with the hashtag #MoğolistanınAdemTatlısı (Mongolia's Adem Tatlı) making the social networking site's trending topics lists for the world and Turkey on Saturday night.

Sharivhan was a teacher in Johannesburg at one of the Turkish schools established by educational volunteers affiliated with the faith-based Hizmet movement, inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.

He was involved in a traffic accident with his family on Saturday in Johannesburg, a provincial capital and one of South Africa's largest cities. Sharivhan died at the scene. His death on the evening of the very day he arrived to the city upset many.

Sharivkhan's friends created the hashtag on Twitter, a reference to the similarity of the circumstances of his passing to the late Adem Tatlı, another teacher at a Hizmet-affiliated school who died in traffic accident in Mongolia. Sharivkhan's friends called him “Mongolia's second Adem Tatlı” because he will also be buried thousands of miles away from his home country.

Tatlı, a Turkish citizen, was serving as an educational volunteer in Mongolia at the time of his fatal traffic accident.

The #MoğolistanınAdemTatlısı hashtag took the second spot on Twitter's list of worldwide trending topics at 8:25 p.m. and also was the top hashtag on the site's list of trending topics in Turkey. Social media users spoke about his tragic death under the hashtag.

He will be buried in the Nizamiye Mosque Cemetery in Johannesburg.

Published on Sunday's Zaman, 17 August 2014, Sunday

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