Three unassigned teachers were battered and detained by police officers while staging sit in at Istanbul's main Taksim Square on Tuesday.

The unemployed teachers, Özgür Karahan, Engin Yılmaz and Murat Özbek were protesting against being forced to wait for their placements to be assigned to public schools.

“Paid slave teachers” and “We want unconditioned assignation”read the banners they opened at the sit in.

After battering and detaining Karahan, Yılmaz and Özbek, police took the teachers to Murat Özbey Karaköy police station.

Thousands of unemployed teachers are waiting to be assigned to public service due to the restriction on the number of assignment quotas depending on departments. Teachers are being forced to be temporary substitute teachers, working under severer conditions and being paid much less than permanent teachers.

The number of unassigned teachers has remarkably increased in recent years as it is mainly “religious culture and moral knowledge” teachers who are being provided with the highest rate of assignments.

A schedule on the quotas of additional assignments to be made this month shows that the large part of the 3,227 quota has been allocated to religious culture and moral knowledge teachers.

According to the schedule which was released on 9 September, the 3,227 teachers to be assigned on 23 September should include 2,065 teachers of religious culture and moral knowledge and 810 teachers of lessons given at religious vocational high schools.

On the other hand, only five teachers are set to be assigned to schools for the visually impaired and mentally handicapped.