The former Turkish Airlines chief financial officer Coskun Kilic said he is suing to be reinstated to the job following a “completely unfair” mass firing at the carrier last month that was part of a government purge against alleged coup plotters.
The lawsuit, which Mr Kilic said he filed in an Istanbul administrative court, demands that the state-controlled carrier either rehire him or pay compensation and clarify that the reason for the sacking was not related to the purge of employees allegedly tied to the US-based imam Fethullah Gulen. The court could not be reached for comment.
Authorities say Mr Gulen’s followers in the Turkish military plotted the bloody coup attempt against the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 15, and tens of thousands of people have been removed from jobs in government or state-regulated industries. While Turkish Airlines, also known as Turk Hava Yollari, did not explain Mr Kilic’s departure when it replaced him, it announced the move at the same time as the dismissal of 211 employees that it said have links to a movement Mr Gulen leads.
“Turkish Airlines’ decision to fire us without showing a real reason is damaging people’s reputation, because we were portrayed as if we are linked with that terror organisation,” Mr Kilic said.
Yahya Ustun, a spokesman at the carrier, declined to comment.
Turkish Airlines replaced Mr Kilic with Murat Seker, the head of investor relations and financial institutions at the state-owned TC Ziraat Bankasi, Turkey’s largest lender. Mr Kilic had been the CFO of the carrier since 2006 and helped to arrange financing of more than US$15 billion of aircraft purchases, including a $3bn facility this year and its debut enhanced equipment trust certificates, or EETCs, in 2015.
Mr Kilic said the company sent him a text on telling him of his dismissal and citing “operational necessities” on July 24.
“The decision was given although there had been no formal accusation, investigation, judicial decision or negative report about and against us by any authority previously,” he said.
More than 80,000 people have been suspended from office or sacked across Turkey since the coup plot, according to the Hurriyet newspaper. The purge has focused on institutions including the military and police, as well as state-owned businesses including Turk Telekomunikasyon, the national landline phone company. The government owns 49 per cent of Turkish Airlines, which employs more than 16,000 people, and it has a controlling vote on the board.
The airline ysterday reported January-July 2016 passenger carried increased by 4.4 per cent, reaching to 35.9 million passengers from 34.4 million passengers versus year ago, while load factor decreased by 4.3 points to 73.7 per cent
The increase in the number of passengers carried in domestic and international lines during the period was 5.9 per cent and 3.2 per cent, respectively
Cargo/mail carried during anuary-July rose by 9.2 per cent to 447,240 tonnes from 409,634 tonnes in 2015.
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