On the eve of the first anniversary of
the Gezi uprising, a small group of textile workers explores a radical
alternative: occupy, resist, produce!
Diren!Kazova, reads the sign above a
small shop and cultural center in Istanbul’s busy Şişli neighborhood. Inside,
the floor is made of cobblestones, giving the visitor the impression of arriving
at a type of indoor street market. Slogans like ’1st of May!’, ‘Resist Kazova!’
and ‘Long Live the Revolution!’ are written on the stones, scattered across the
room. From the walls hang racks full of sweaters, hundreds of them. At first
glance they appear to be just ordinary sweaters. That is, until one learns the
story behind them. Then suddenly the sweaters turn into symbols of resistance,
signs of defiance, and the materialized hope for a more equal society, a more
just economy — yes, for a better world even.
The story starts over a year ago, in the last
week of January 2013. At that time the workers of the Kazova textile factory
were put on a one-week leave by their bosses, the brothers Ümit and Umut
Somuncu, without having received their salaries, let alone overtime pay, for
several months. The Somuncu brothers told them that upon returning to the
factory one week later they would receive their back pay, but instead they were
met by the company lawyer who informed them that all the 95 workers had been
collectively fired because of their ‘unaccounted-for absence’ for three
consecutive days. The bosses had
disappeared overnight, taking with them 100,000 sweaters,
40 tons of yarn and anything of value. They had sabotaged the machines they
couldn’t bring with them, leaving the workers empty-handed, without their
salaries and without their means of production.
Some of the workers had spent years, if not
decades, in the factory, and now suddenly, from one day to the next they found
themselves without a job, without an income and without any right or possibility
to bring their criminal bosses to justice. ”In Turkey, the law is not designed
in favor of the worker,” states Nihat Özbey, one of the Kazova employees, when I
speak with him in their shop. “So, were it not for the use of force, we would
never have gotten what we wanted.”
With this in mind, the workers did the only
sensible thing they could do: they resisted. Their resistance started in the
form of weekly protest marches from the neighborhood’s central square to the
factory, but as soon as they learned that in their absence the factory’s former
managers continued to rob the place of anything valuable, the workers decided to
occupy their former workplace. “On April 28 we pulled up our tent in front of
the factory,” Kazova worker Bülent Ünal
recounts, “From then on our resistance became a tent
resistance.”
Resistance and solidarity
In the weeks that followed the workers were
attacked by hired thugs, accused of theft by their former employers and
tear-gassed and beaten by the police when they staged a protest on May Day, but
none of this could break their determination to fight for what was rightfully
theirs. On June 30, emboldened by the
Gezi Uprising, the workers moved ahead with
their planned occupation of the factory.
First, they tried to sell off the remaining
machines in the factory, but soon they were once again attacked by the police.
When four of their comrades were taken into custody, the other eight workers who
were part of the resistance staged a hunger strike to protest against this
treatment by the authorities, who treated them as the criminals and their former
bosses as the victims. “The boss stealing our labor, taking away the machines
was no crime. But us trying to get a fraction of our dues
was a
crime,”
states Ünal. “The police came to the factory following
complaints by the bosses [...]. Again investigations were conducted about us;
again
we were the accused. No one said a word to the bosses.”
The workers realized very well that the odds were
against them, and that their resistance would be met with violence and attempts
by the powers-that-be to sabotage their efforts at independently running their
factory. Nonetheless, inspired and strengthened by the show of solidarity they
received from their neighbors, fellow workers and comrades across the city and
across the country, the Kazova workers decided to reopen the factory. They
resumed production using the old machinery their bosses had left behind and the
few raw materials they had overlooked when plundering the factory.
The first batch of sweaters they produced under
workers’ control was sent to the women and child prisoners who had written them
letters of support during their struggle. The remaining sweaters were sold at
the cafe of the
Kolektif 26A in Taksim and at the numerous
Gezi forums across the city, which had
sprung up after Gezi Park had been evicted by the authorities in mid-June. The
money they made through these sales was used to repair the machines that were
sabotaged by their bosses.
In order to make their struggle more visible to
the public, the workers also organized several public forums and in September
hosted an actual
fashion show in which a number of public
figures — including intellectuals, journalists, actors, academics and music
groups — participated. “Fashion of resistance,” the Turkish writer, lawyer and
activist Metin Yeğin called it, before pointing out the sweet irony of using one
of capitalism’s own products as an act of resistance.
‘Affordable Sweaters For All!’
A recent court ruling decided that the machinery
in the factory would come to the workers as compensation for their lost wages,
and with the machines brought to a new location everything is now ready for
production, which should be possible within two months.
The slogan adopted by the Kazova workers —
‘Affordable Sweaters For All!’ — bears witness to their belief that this
struggle is about so much more than just the jobs and livelihoods of a dozen
individuals. The workers are very well aware of the highly important time and
place in which their struggle takes place, and the fact that its outcome of it
will fill thousands of supporters, comrades, onlookers and colleagues with
either hope or despair.
And just as the struggle is not socially confined
to the Kazova workers themselves, so its geographical reach expands far beyond
the borders of Turkey. The workers have already reached out to self-managed
factories and cooperatives elsewhere, including
Vio.Me in Greece and the Mondragon Cooperatives in the
Basque Country, in order to establish connections of solidarity; to learn from
the experiences of others and possibly in the future exchange the products of
their labor.
The Kazova workers claim to have been inspired
and emboldened by the wave of Gezi protests, and now through their determination
to run their future factory as an autonomous workers’ collective, their struggle
has turned into a beacon of hope for all those who took to the streets in their
hundreds of thousands to resist the policies of an increasingly authoritarian
government.
Turkey’s poor labor rights
Turkey has a long tradition of suppression and
restriction of labor rights, which was already widespread under the country’s
former military dictatorship in the 1980s and has continued under the current
Justice and Development Party (AKP) government (check out this
excellent article on the topic). Rights to
organize and strike have been curtailed, and worker rights are violated on a
massive scale with unsafe working conditions and virtual impunity for company
owners who fill their pockets while workers are dying.
In January alone, 82 people
died after suffering work-related injuries
— two of whom were just kids, 6 and 13 years old respectively, who died on the
streets while collecting garbage to support their families. More recently, in a
horrific confirmation of the poor state of workers’ safety conditions in Turkey,
over 300 miners died when a fire broke out in a coal mine in
Soma. In March, the mine received a “
perfect score” from a government
safety-inspector, who happened to be the brother-in-law of a senior executive of
the company, highlighting the close relations between government officials and
leading business figures.
According to the constitution, labor unions must
represent a majority of the employees at the workplace, and 3 percent of all
workers in that particular sector in order to become a bargaining agent (this is
down from 10 percent prior to 2012, but since the amount of sectors has been
reduced simultaneously and their size increased, the 3 percent representation
might actually be harder to attain than the former 10 percent). Just as any
government ruled by neoliberal principles would like to see it, union membership
has dropped to an all-time low with less than 6 percent of the labor force
organized in unions. The government has actively promoted neoliberal employment
policies that rule out benefits, cut healthcare and keep millions of people
hostage in precarious and insecure work arrangements.
The use of subcontractors was one of the main
reasons for the workers of the Greif burlap bag factory to organize a strike in
the early months of 2014. They demanded an end to subcontracted labor, with the
subcontractors being brought in-house, a pay-rise, up from the legal minimum
wage of 978 Turkish liras (about €330,-) and social rights. For 90 days the
workers were on strike, occupying their factory, until
a police raid on April 10 brought it to an
end, detaining at least 91 people engaged in the occupation, and two reporters
covering the raid.
A radically democratic alternative
In the past year, the AKP’s victory in recent
municipal elections, the slowing down of the Turkish economy, and last summer’s
wave of Gezi protests have only radicalized Erdoğan’s government in its fight
against workers in general, and the left-leaning labor unions in particular. The
government recently tried to prosecute leaders of the KESK, the Turkish
public-sector trade union, on trumped-up charges of terrorism. In February, 23
union members were
released after one year in prison, while
six of their colleagues remain behind bars.
On May Day, the center of Istanbul was again
shrouded in clouds of tear gas when thousands of workers, radical leftists and
other sympathizers attempted to march on the iconic and thoroughly sealed-off
Taksim square. With the celebration of the first anniversary of the Gezi
uprisings only days away, the streets of Istanbul and other major cities across
Turkey will undoubtedly once more become the stage for a violent stand-off
between the AKP’s private security forces (i.e. the national police) and
protesters from all walks of life demanding justice, equality and the fall of
the AKP government.
In the midst of this ongoing struggle between
workers fighting for their rights and a government enthusiastically suppressing
all dissident voices, the Kazova workers have come up with a radically
democratic alternative: “Occupy, Resist, Produce!” — a battle-cry they adopted
from the recovered factory movement of Argentina. Rather than demanding legal
reforms that the government probably won’t honor anyway, or demanding a pay-rise
from a boss who would rather set the police free on his own employees, the
Kazova workers have taken matters into their own hands.
Not demanding better pay and working conditions,
but taking them; not asking for a better alternative,
but creating their own; not fighting just for their money, but
for control over the means of production.
“Profit is not our aim,” explains Nihat Özbey,
“but rather the exchange of ideas, to create revolutionary solidarity contacts.
If we succeed, it will be one of the first times in Turkey that workers have
occupied their factory and successfully restarted production under workers’
control.” Whenever they open their new factory, their old colleagues — even
those who did not participate in the resistance — will be welcomed back to join
the cooperative, where all will enjoy equal pay and equal rights, according to
Özbey.
“We won’t be focusing on the past,” he says. And
that is exactly the power and the beauty of Kazova’s example. This small group
of 11 workers, who have been denied their rightful means to subsistence, have
been lied to and have been fooled, tricked, tried, beaten, arrested, attacked,
abused and gassed, have never looked back but instead have concentrated on what
lies ahead. Through their refusal to give up and their determination to succeed,
the Kazova workers are an inspiration to all. Their eventual victory may well
mark the start of a whole new chapter of the resistance in Turkey.
Joris Leverink is
an Istanbul-based freelance writer and an editor for ROAR Magazine. Follow him
on Twitter @JorisLever.
Cole Harrison
