The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey
The most formative work in decades on the Turkish political economy and the devastation wrought by an authoritarian government on the countrys workers. I highly recommend this book for all those who seek to understand the emergence of widespread resistance by an increasingly militant working class in Turkey.
Immanuel Ness, Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and author of Organizing Insurgency
A deep and timely analysis with an overarching narrative of the Turkish labour markets under the conditionalities of late capitalism [...] An indispensable resource on the economics of labour.
A. Erin Yeldan, Professor of Economics at Kadir Has University
Impressively comprehensive [...] The contributions not only cover the sphere of production, but equally social reproduction including the importance of unpaid labour in patriarchal capitalist structures, as well as migration as a source of cheap labour. A must-read for everyone interested in the role of Turkish labour in the crisis-ridden 21st century.
Andreas Bieler, Professor of Political Economy, University of Nottingham
This excellent book is remarkable for its courageous and insightful analysis. Against the grain of the contemporary near silence about the struggles of societys surplus value producers who make a living in miserable conditions, this volume articulates the suffering inflicted and brings to the fore the collective forms of resistance to that suffering.
Professor Werner Bonefeld, University of York
The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey
Labour Under Neoliberal Authoritarianism
Edited by
aatay Edgcan ahin and Mehmet Erman Erol
First published 2021 by Pluto Press
New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright aatay Edgcan ahin and Mehmet Erman Erol 2021
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4312 9 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4311 2 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 4315 0 PDF
ISBN 978 0 7453 4313 6 EPUB
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Introduction
Mehmet Erman Erol and aatay Edgcan ahin
Mehmet Erman Erol
Kerem Gkten
Koray R. Ylmaz
Sebiha Kablay
Demet zmen Ylmaz
Coku elik
Ertan Erol
Denizcan Kutlu
Elif Hacsaliholu
Murat zveri
Yeliz Sarz Gkten
Berna Gler and Erhan Acar
aatay Edgcan ahin
Abbreviations
AIA Automotive Industrialists Association
AKP Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi)
AMECO Annual macro-economic database of the European Commissions Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs
ANAP Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi)
ARIP Agricultural Reform Implementation Project
CBRT The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey
DSK Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions
EES European Employment Strategy
ESM European Social Model
ESOP Employee stock ownership plans
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
HAK- Confederation of Turkish Real Trade Unions
HRW Human Rights Watch
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
IRA Independent Regulatory Agency
ISI Import Substitution Industrialisation
ITUC International Trade Union Confederation
KESK Confederation of Public Employees Trade Unions
MESS Turkish Employers Association of Metal Industries
MFSP Ministry of Family and Social Policies
MOD Ministry of Development (DPT)
MOLSS Ministry of Labour and Social Security
MOENR Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources
MSAD Independent Industrialists and Businessmens Association
NES National Employment Strategy
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PEA Private Employment Agencies
PETKM Petrokimya Holding Inc.
PKK Kurdistan Workers Party
QE Quantitative Easing
SAP Structural Adjustment Policies
SEKA General Directory of Turkeys Cellulose and Paper Factories
SGK Social Security Institution
SOE State Owned Enterprise
TEKEL Turkish Tobacco and Alcoholic Beverages Company
TSK Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations
TTSS Turkish Textile Employers Union of Turkey
TRK- Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions
TurkStat Turkish Statistical Institute
TSAD Turkish Industry and Business Association
UIF Unemployment Insurance Fund
WB World Bank
WHO World Health Organization
WSM Workers Self-management
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Immanuel Ness for his encouragement and support for this project since the very beginning. We would like to thank David Shulman and everyone at Pluto Press for all their help and guidance. We are grateful to Christopher Shim for his help in preparing the index. We would like to thank our contributors without whose hard work this book would not have been possible. Finally, special thanks go to Fiona and Duygu for their support throughout the development of this project.
Introduction
Mehmet Erman Erol and aatay Edgcan ahin
But the bourgeoisie defends its interests with all the power placed at its disposal by wealth and the might of the State. (Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)
In the aftermath of the Soma mining disaster in Turkey where 301 workers died in 2014, the then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan cited nineteenth-century Britain to prove that these accidents are usual. I went back to British history he said, some 204 people died there after a mine collapsed in 1838. In 1866, 361 miners died in Britain. In an explosion in 1894, 290 people died there (Hurriyet Daily News, 2014). These anachronistic comments were shocking; but the comparison with the savage capitalism of nineteenth-century Britain also exposed the modus operandi of Turkish capitalism in the twenty-first century.
This savage capitalism of nineteenth-century Britain was most famously analysed by Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England, originally published in 1845. Having been completed on the 200th anniversary of Engels birth, and in the context of President Erdoans comments, this book project takes its inspiration from Engels, and specifically his above-mentioned work, as the title of this book suggests. Written in the heyday of the industrial revolution, young Engels impressive study and his documentation of the condition of the English working class reflected the brutal exploitation of labour in Victorian England. He was appalled by widespread child labour, low wages, miserable conditions, poor health, death rates and environmental destruction, as well as the English bourgeoisie.
