The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey

Description

Decades of neoliberal authoritarianism have propelled Turkey into crisis. Regime change, economic disaster and Erdogan’s ambition to impose ‘one-man rule’ have shaken the foundations of Turkish political life, but what does this mean for workers?

Moving beyond the headlines and personalities, this book uncovers the real condition of the working class in modern Turkey. Combining field research and in-depth interviews, it offers cutting-edge analyses of workplace struggles, trade unionism, the AKP’s relationship with neoliberalism, migration, gender, agrarian change and precarity, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on workers.

Bringing together Turkish activists and scholars, this book is an inside look at the dynamics and contradictions of working-class resistance against Turkey’s neoliberal authoritarian regime; from worker self-management to organised labour and rural struggles.

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction - Mehmet Erman Erol and Çağatay Edgücan Şahin

PART I: RESTRUCTURING

Neoliberal Restructuring of Labour and the State: From Military Dictatorship to the AKP Era

1. Not-So-Strange Bedfellows: Neoliberalism and the AKP in Turkey - Mehmet Erman Erol

2. Turkey’s Labour Markets Under Neoliberalism: An Overview - Kerem Gökten

3. Commodification and Changing Labour in Turkey: The Working Class in the Public Sector - Koray R. Yılmaz

4. Neoliberal Transformation of Turkey’s Health Sector and its Effects on the Health Labour Force - Sebiha Kablay

Gender, Migration and Rural Aspects of Neoliberal Restructuring

5. Between Neoliberalism and Conservatism: Recent Developments and New Agendas in Female Labour Policies in Turkey - Demet Özmen Yılmaz

6. The Making of the Rural Proletariat in Neoliberal Turkey - Coşku Çelik

7. Burden or a Saviour at a Time of Economic Crisis? AKP’s ‘Open-Door Migration Policy’ and its Impact on Labour Market Restructuring in Turkey - Ertan Erol

PART II: CONTAINMENT

8. Social Assistance as a Non-Wage Income for the Poor in Turkey: Work and Subsistence Patterns of Social Assistance Recipient Households - Denizcan Kutlu

9. A View of Precarisation from Turkey: Urban-Rural Dynamics and Intergenerational Precarity - Elif Hacısalihoğlu

10. When the Law is Not Enough: ‘Work Accidents’, Profit Maximisation and the Unwritten Rules of Workers’ Health and Safety in New Turkey - Murat Özveri

11. Are We All in the Same Boat? Covid-19 and the Working Class in Turkey - Yeliz Sarıöz Gökten

PART III: RESISTANCE

12. Reconsidering Workers’ Self-Management in Turkey: From Resistance to Workers’ Self-Management Possibilities/Constraints - Berna Güler and Erhan Acar

13. Organised Workers’ Struggles Under Neoliberalism: Unions, Capital and the State in Turkey - Çağatay Edgücan Şahin

Notes

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Advocacy
• Political Process
• Political Ideologies
• 20th Century
• Industries
• Modern
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Erdogan
• Movimiento sindical
• Partido de la Justicia y el Desarrollo
• Turquía
• Advocacy group
• 21st century
• Sociology
• Communism
• Modern history
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• Ideology
• Political economy
• Middle East
• Trade union
• Economics
• Erdo?an
• Business
• General
• Turkey
• Communisme
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Labor
• AKP
• Industrie

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745343136
• Langue: English

Extrait

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 country s 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 society s 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 a atay Edg can ahin and Mehmet Erman Erol
First published 2021 by Pluto Press New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright a atay Edg can 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
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction Mehmet Erman Erol and a atay Edg can ahin
PART I: RESTRUCTURING
Neoliberal Restructuring of Labour and the State: From Military Dictatorship to the AKP Era
1. Not-So-Strange Bedfellows: Neoliberalism and the AKP in Turkey
Mehmet Erman Erol
2. Turkey s Labour Markets Under Neoliberalism: An Overview
Kerem G kten
3. Commodification and Changing Labour in Turkey: The Working Class in the Public Sector
Koray R. Y lmaz
4. Neoliberal Transformation of Turkey s Health Sector and its Effects on the Health Labour Force
Sebiha Kablay
Gender, Migration and Rural Aspects of Neoliberal Restructuring
5. Between Neoliberalism and Conservatism: Recent Developments and New Agendas in Female Labour Policies in Turkey
Demet zmen Y lmaz
6. The Making of the Rural Proletariat in Neoliberal Turkey
Co ku elik
7. Burden or a Saviour at a Time of Economic Crisis? AKP s Open-Door Migration Policy and its Impact on Labour Market Restructuring in Turkey
Ertan Erol
PART II: CONTAINMENT
8. Social Assistance as a Non-Wage Income for the Poor in Turkey: Work and Subsistence Patterns of Social Assistance Recipient Households
Denizcan Kutlu
9. A View of Precarisation from Turkey: Urban-Rural Dynamics and Intergenerational Precarity
Elif Hac saliho lu
10. When the Law is Not Enough: Work Accidents , Profit Maximisation and the Unwritten Rules of Workers Health and Safety in New Turkey
Murat zveri
11. Are We All in the Same Boat? Covid-19 and the Working Class in Turkey
Yeliz Sar z G kten
PART III: RESISTANCE
12. Reconsidering Workers Self-Management in Turkey: From Resistance to Workers Self-Management Possibilities/Constraints
Berna G ler and Erhan Acar
13. Organised Workers Struggles Under Neoliberalism: Unions, Capital and the State in Turkey
a atay Edg can ahin
Notes
Contributors
Index
Abbreviations
AIA - Automotive Industrialists Association
AKP - Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk nma Partisi)
AMECO - Annual macro-economic database of the European Commission s 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
D SK - 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
M S AD - Independent Industrialists and Businessmen s Association
NES - National Employment Strategy
OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
PEA - Private Employment Agencies
PETK M - Petrokimya Holding Inc.
PKK - Kurdistan Workers Party
QE - Quantitative Easing
SAP - Structural Adjustment Policies
SEKA - General Directory of Turkey s Cellulose and Paper Factories
SGK - Social Security Institution
SOE - State Owned Enterprise
TEKEL - Turkish Tobacco and Alcoholic Beverages Company
T SK - Turkish Confederation of Employer Associations
TTS S - Turkish Textile Employer s Union of Turkey
T RK- - Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions
TurkStat - Turkish Statistical Institute
T S AD - 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 a atay Edg can 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 Erdo an 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 Erdo an s 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.
Looking at the condition of the working class in Turkey in the twenty-first century, we share a similar sentiment, which led us to edit this volume. We wanted to document and analyse the condition of the working class in Turkey in the twenty-first century, as we are appalled by widespread work murders , low wages, miserable conditions, widespread precarity and insecurity, commodification, extractivism, systematic violation of labour rights, and practices of gendered division of labour. The developments since the Covid-19 pandemic have so far proven that this condition will be worsened as the pandemic is seen as an economic opportunity by the capitalists and the state; and that Turkey could seek to capitalise on a possible shake-up of global supply chains (Pitel, 2020) through its cheap labour.
Turkey s political economy since the twentieth century has never been truly pro-labour, as the country embraced capitalist development which relied on the exploitation of labour. However, as capitalism developed, so did class struggle. The labour movement