Greater Jakarta: Students, parents protest Turkish Embassy’s statement

Students and parents at the Turkish-affiliated Pribadi Bilingual boarding school in Depok, West Java, have filed objections over a recent statement from the Turkish Embassy in Jakarta that referred to the school as having links with a terrorist organization.

A spokesman for Yenbu Indonesia Foundation, which operates the school, said the school had received protests from both students and their parents after the embassy made the statement on Thursday.

“[The students and their parents] contacted us via Whatsapp and phone calls, telling us that they were offended that their school had been called a terrorist school,” the foundation’s spokesman Ari Rosandi said as quoted by kompas.com on Friday.

Some of the students and parents even directed their complaints to the embassy via social media, he said, adding that school activities had not been disturbed by the embassy’s controversial statement.

“We asked students if any of the teachers there had ever taught hatred to them and they replied that none had. That shows that this school is not a terrorist school,” said Maman Firmansyah, the headmaster for the junior and senior high schools of Pribadi Bilingual boarding school.

Previously, the Turkish Embassy issued a statement that Pribadi Bilingual boarding school was among nine schools in Indonesia affiliated with US-Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. The cleric is suspected by Ankara as the mastermind behind a recent failed coup attempt in Turkey.

Published on The Jakarta Post, 30 July 2016, Saturday

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