The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday extended the stay of the former Turkish employees of the Pak-Turk International Schools in the province till October 10 and ordered the authorities concerned to restrain from deporting them.
According to details, the stay order was issued by a two-judge bench, headed by Justice Munib Akhtar, which also issued notices to the federal and provincial authorities to file their comments in this regard by the next hearing which is scheduled for October 10.
The stay order came on a petition jointly filed by the former employees of the Pak-Turk International Schools who approached the court last week apprehending their likely deportation after their colleague was believed to have gone missing, along with his family, from Lahore.
In the plea, the Turkish nationals said Islamabad was trying to deport staffers of the Pak-Turk schools under pressure from Ankara. They said that the court had previously restrained the federal authorities from deporting the Turkish nationals who were performing teaching duties at the schools run by the foundation of US-based Turkish leader Fethullah Gulen.
They alleged that the authorities were still deporting Turkish nationals and their families in violation of the order passed by the high court. The petitioners mentioned that a former principal of a Pak-Turk school named Mesut Kacmez and his family members were taken away by men in plainclothes from their residence in Lahore on September 27.
Kacmez, with his wife and two young daughters, was reportedly taken to an undisclosed location, they said, quoting media reports. The petitioners said that an attempt was also recently made to kidnap the family of another Turkish national in Khairpur. They pleaded to the court to restrain the federal and provincial authorities from deporting them to Turkey.
Court also directed the interior ministry to put the names of all the employees of the Pak-Turk schools on the Exit Control List (ECL) to stop their deportation. The judges took up the matter and after hearing initial arguments from the petitioners’ lawyer, issued notices to the federal authorities to file their comments by October 10. Till then, the judges restrained the federal government from deporting the petitioners.
In December last year, the deportation issue was taken up in court by a group of parents, students and teachers of the Pak-Turk schools against the deportation of Turkish teaching staff, following a request by the Turkish government. Turkey had requested Pakistan to close down the Pak-Turk schools run by Gulen, who had been accused of instigating a coup attempt last year.
The interior ministry had in November last year ordered the Turkish staff, of the educational network to leave Pakistan, rejecting their applications for visa extensions. The students and teachers had argued that the Pak-Turk Foundation was a non-profit, non-governmental organisation which had nothing to do with the politics of Pakistan or Turkey.
The petitioners submitted that the deportation order would hurt the interests of 11,000 students studying at the schools.
