Arzu Çerkezoğlu
President General of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK) – TURKEY

We are facing one of the most serious subsistence crises in Türkiye’s history. Millions of workers, laborers, pensioners, in other words, most of the working and productive population of this country is trying to survive under the weight of incessant increases of prices and heavy taxes. Under conditions of high inflation, real income losses are not compensated and an unfair tax system leads to a large transfer of income from the working class to capital, from the poor to the rich. In other words, the most important reason for the subsistence crisis we are experiencing is the enormous increase in inequality of distribution. This means that the working class in Türkiye is not getting poorer because Türkiye is getting poorer; this process of impoverishment is occurring because a small group of people in Türkiye are adding profit to their profits and wealth to their fortunes.

At the 17th General Assembly of our Confederation, we affirmed that this unlimited and irresponsible appetite for exploitation, inherent in the nature of capitalism, has reached a savage phase called „crocodile capitalism“ and it is clear that Türkiye is a „model“ country in this respect.

For example, while labor’s share of Gross Value Added was 36.3% in 2016, it fell to 26.3% in 2022. And the share of capital increased from 47.5% to 53.7%. On the other hand, this decrease in the share of workers in the distribution occurred during a period of rapid laborization, in other words, while the number of waged workers was increasing.

In 2002, when the AKP came to power, salaried employees accounted for half of total employment and the share of labor payments in GDP was 28%. In 2022, the proportion of salaried employees exceeded 70.5%, meaning that the number of workers increased enormously. Despite the fact that Turkish society has largely converted to manpower, the share of labor payments in GDP has not increased, nor has it remained constant: The proportion of salaried employees increased from 50% to more than 70%, while the proportion of employee payments decreased. In short, a massive wave of laborization was accompanied by a policy of strong wage suppression. In other words, AKP governments have been the authors of policies that devalued labor while massifying it.

From agricultural policies to privatization, it is not possible to tell here in detail the story of how the Turkish population has been turned into workers. Nevertheless, it is very important to remember how the largely working class Turkish society was condemned together to a minimum wage, to a minimum pension, in short, to a minimum life, how we were all equalized to the „minimum“, in order to find solutions and organize our struggle against these policies that have turned Türkiye into a model country of crocodile capitalism.

The most important „opportunity“ to condemn the working class of Türkiye to the minimum wage and the people of Türkiye to the minimum life is our lack of organization. Türkiye has for years been among the 10 countries with the worst labor rights in the world, due to the fact that trade union rights lag far behind ILO standards and that working life is based on the prevention of unionization in law and practice. Türkiye continues to rank at the bottom of OECD countries in terms of unionization.

Obstacles to union rights and the reduction of the scope of collective bargaining are the strongest basis for the condemnation of minimum living. In Türkiye, collective bargaining coverage is 10.6% and minimum wage coverage is around 50%, while the average collective bargaining coverage in the EU is 60% and minimum wage coverage is 4%.

Since the military coup d’état of September 12, 1980, these policies, which can be considered „state policy,“ have been carried to the point that the AKP has gloried in banning strikes. As a result of these policies, which consider it a „matter of national security“ for workers to have a voice and decision about their bread and their future, an increasing proportion of workers (more than half according to the latest data) have been condemned to minimum wages and wages around the minimum wage.

Along with the condemnation to the minimum wage, a policy of cutting the minimum wage and all salaries in real terms was also implemented. The minimum wage determination process, which was already anti-democratic because of its unfair representation, unilateral decision-making by bosses and the state, and lack of the right to strike, has become more anti- democratic, especially with the transition to the Presidential Government System. The Minimum Wage Determination Commission was disfunctionalized and the determination of the minimum wage was left to the initiative of a single person.

As a result, the minimum wage, and consequently all wages, have been reduced in real terms. When we look at gold prices to show the real decline in the minimum wage, we see that while in 2005 one could buy 31.5 Republic Gold Coins with the annual minimum wage, today one can buy an average of 12.6 Republic Gold Coins. The minimum wage, which was 80.6% of GDP per capita in the 1970s, was reduced to 50.7% of GDP per capita in 2023. And finally, as of April 2024, the minimum wage remained below the starvation threshold, which covers only a family’s food expenses.

While the working class in Türkiye is condemned to wages around the minimum wage, while the incomes of tens of millions of our citizens fall below the starvation threshold, the tax burden also falls on the backs of workers, laborers and pensioners. Although every day it is discovered that the owners of big capital, big business and conglomerates have no tax expenditures; while taxes are readjusted overnight, new tax privileges arrive every day for businessmen, for us, the workers and laborers who live below the starvation and poverty line, taxes are one of the most important expenses. The largest portion of tax revenue comes from indirect taxes, at 75%, and the richest and poorest pay these taxes equally at the bazaar and in the market. This is not enough, the country’s rulers knowingly do not increase the tax brackets and place us workers in the top tax bracket as if we had enriched ourselves during the year. In other words, injustice in income is reinforced by injustice in taxes .

The struggle is an obligation for all of us in a period when the distribution relations have deteriorated extraordinarily; when a system that takes from the poor to give to the rich, takes from the worker to give to capital; and when the system is secured by an extraordinarily oppressive regime that does not recognize our rights, our law and even the Constitution, and when all democratic

As DISK, we have been waging a struggle under the title “Justice in Revenue, Justice in Taxes” for more than two years. We have raised our voice in workplaces and squares across Turkey, and we will continue to do so. We are reaping the fruits of these efforts and the working class is turning to DISK and joining DISK. As the statistics for July reflect, there is a significant increase in membership and our unions are breaking down anti-democratic barriers one by one.

Of course, these efforts make sense, but the unionization rate remains extremely low. Under these circumstances, we must, on the one hand, accelerate our organizational efforts and, on the other, rapidly build a line of struggle that goes beyond the very valuable struggles for the rights of our own members.

At the 17th General Assembly of DISK, we expressed this need with the following statements: “We need to open a new path, recognizing that the paths we already know, the ones we take by heart, the means and methods of struggle we are used to are insufficient. In the coming period of struggle, we are faced with the need to blaze a new path and even new ways. We need to find a progressive solution to the problems, crises and conflicts we are experiencing in this country today.

Yes, the forces we oppose are applying the politics of their own class. For years we have been told that privatisation, subcontracting and precarious forms of work are good for society as a whole. Nowadays, even in the Mid-Term Program, they brag that precarious forms of work will be expanded. They advocated that even taking away our severance pay was a good thing for the working class. The forces we face make their own class politics. First it impoverishes millions of people and then shackles them by offering only crumbs. It prevents working class unity by setting workers against other workers because of their identities, beliefs and origins. It creates the impression that the blue-collar worker is the rival of the white-collar worker, and that it is the blue-collar worker who impoverishes the white-collar worker. It divides us, it breaks us, it rules us.

It is necessary for us to give an answer. We have to develop working class politics and confront this dominant political plane. The working class must intervene in politics, from which it was forcibly expelled by neoliberal policies and by the military coup of 1980. We have to succeed.

The system does not allow workers to be a class and prevents them from being in the decision-making process as a collective subject. The working class does not consist of the sum total of people who individually sell their labor power. The working class is the subject that will determine the life, politics and destiny of itself and its country. Our duty is to reorganize the working class as the determinant from the social, political and ideological point of view. The working class must be the main determinant of politics for an order in which we will decide how the resources of our country will be used, what we will produce, how we will produce, how we will share and where we will live humanely.

Working class politics is not about someone pretending to speak for the working class. Or to speak about the working class when making politics. Working class politics consists of the working class determining politics with its own demands, its own program of struggle and its own organizations, becoming a collective subject that will shape the future of society.

Speaking in a self-critical sense, today we are far from this situation. Not only the workers, but also the majority of the population, Türkiye’s society in general, is in a deep crisis of disorganization. DISK has the experience and potential to change this picture. Yes, to achieve this, our unions must grow. Of course, it is important and valuable to develop our unions one by one, but it is not enough. In a society that is enormously working-class and enormously unorganized, we must have another fundamental task, which is to organize DISK as a „social center of attraction“, a „social starting point“. Recently, we have seen that this can be reflected in the smallest step we take on various agendas ranging from the pension issue to tax justice. We need to make these efforts in a more conscious, organized and planned way.

The agenda of workers‘ politics is more or less clear. In a context in which wages are reduced as a consequence of social policy and they are the most immutable element of the economic policy of the rulers, the wage struggle is one of the most essential programs of class politics. The wage question is not only a question of sharing between workers and employers, but also a political struggle against Türkiye’s role as a cheap labor paradise in the international order. The wage issue is a national issue against those who try to devalue our labor and trade it as cheap labor in the international markets.

The struggle for tax justice will continue to be one of the fundamental agendas of labor policy. The struggle we carry on for a tax system in which the top earners and the corporations, banks and conglomerates are taxed more, relieving the tax burden on the backs of workers, laborers, pensioners and the poor, is widely accepted in society as a political and moral struggle.

Any struggle for union rights and freedoms, especially the right to organize and strike, is a directly political struggle. It is a democratic and patriotic objection against the policies that aim to turn Türkiye into a paradise of unlimited exploitation for capital.

Protecting and developing the rights and freedoms won by the working class from the past to the present is possible under democratic regimes. Democracy and justice are essential for the protection of the rights and freedoms of the working class and for the winning of new ones. The struggle for democracy and justice is the main agenda of labor politics.

And our most important issue: Unity of the workers, fraternity of the peoples… In the face of the dominant policies of divide – fracture – exploit, the way to guarantee the unity of the working class is to defend fraternity, peace, secularism and gender equality. Hiring any portion of the working class under worse conditions because of their origin, identity or gender threatens the rights of the entire working class. Therefore, it is our fundamental duty to explain to the entire working class that our destiny is not with those who exploit us, but with all our class brothers and sisters with whom we work together in the same workplaces.

Yes, it is time for the working class, which now constitutes a very important part of the population, to take the destiny of this country into its own hands.

This country needs the voice and the struggle of the working class. And the most important subject that can fulfill this is, of course, DISK, with its historical experience, the consciousness sifted by that experience and the present level of organization that can be a significant starting point. It is necessary to develop our organization throughout Türkiye and in all lines of work, not only by calling workers to DISK, but also by transforming the current vital struggle of the working class into an all-out struggle against this unjust order.

Starting from the awareness of this historical responsibility, we initiate a new period of our struggle for „Justice in Income, Justice in Taxes“. We call upon all workers, laborers, pensioners, youth and women, whether they are our members or not, to gather in the squares all over Türkiye, saying: „This is not the time to fight alone for life, but to raise the struggle for justice together.“

We will struggle to broaden the struggle by adding new voices to ours in each „Justice Stop“ of our bus „Justice in Income, Justice in Taxes“ that will travel through the squares of our country from city to city. We know that in each „Justisce Stop“ in which the rage and the demands of the workers, the laborers, the pensioners and the people are raised, we will be one step closer to conquering the human quality of life that we deserve.

It is time to go out to the square side by side to hold accountable those responsible for this great impoverishment, for this great injustice. We will make pledges to each other at Justice Stops all over Türkiye and prepare for our great gathering in Ankara. And united with those who produce all the values and beauties of this country, we will speak throughout the country about the importance of being organized, the importance of organized struggle, and we will increase the struggle for the solution of all our problems under the guidance of the following words of our founding General President Kemal Türkler:

„We are workers, we workers are the ones who produce everything in the world, when the workers stop, the world stops, comrades, the plane stops, the ship stops, the factories stop, all the vehicles stop. As long as we, the workers, understand this, we