Health and Social Service Workers’ Union (SES) Aksaray Co-chair Diren Can Kaya stated that the organized structures of workers and laborers continue their efforts with the principle that “the subject of a democratic society is society itself, not the state,” without expecting anything from the current government. He emphasized that as the Confederation of Public Employees’ Trade Unions (KESK), they have expressed the demand for an honorable peace at every opportunity.
Diren Can Kaya spoke to ANF and said that workers approach the process with concern due to past experiences. Kaya said: “Although workers and laborers approach the process with concern because of their past experiences, they have begun to follow it with the awareness and belief that the solution to the misery they are experiencing is peace and a democratic society. As SES and as part of our confederation KESK, we have expressed the demand for an honorable peace at every opportunity. We continue to declare, as in every period, that our organizational stance will be on the side of honorable peace. Our claim to be the largest labor organization of these lands also stems from the fact that we are an organization of peace, democracy, women, and ecology. It comes from the ability of workers and laborers to struggle freely with their language and identity.”
No expectations from the current government
Kaya recalled that during the previous collective bargaining period, President Erdoğan had responded to the unions’ demands by asking, “Do you know how much a single bullet costs?” and continued: “At the beginning of this process, the first thought that came to mind was that the greatest excuse used by the political power, which never directed the question of bullet prices to capital owners, but always to workers, would finally disappear. The demands of workers dismissed from their jobs and livelihoods through decree laws, and of thousands condemned to hunger by trustee interventions, are clear. At the current stage, the fact that trustees in Van (Wan) most recently deprived workers of their livelihoods has led to an increasingly loud expression of distrust among all laborers, unionized or not. Workers and laborers are witnessing the same authoritarian regime’s attacks on Turkey’s democratic forces, while at the same time being condemned to poverty and misery during the collective bargaining process by the government’s own hand. It is also clear that, while it would have been possible to dismiss a trustee with a single signature and reinstate the dismissed workers, the government has instead chosen repression, as seen in Van. Yet it should not be overlooked that the organized structures of workers and laborers, acting with the consciousness that ‘the subject of a democratic society is society itself, not the state,’ have already begun to carry out their work without expecting anything from the current government.”
PKK’s steps on the workers’ agenda
Kaya noted that the steps taken by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have become a serious topic of discussion among workers and laborers, from factories to workshops, from hospitals to tax offices. He said: “For workers and laborers, it would be a grave mistake to expect that a structure governed by a one-man regime, which has already lost its legitimacy, could build a democratic society or take equal steps for such a process. Yet we can express why these steps need to accelerate in this way: today, the situation in both Turkey and the Middle East is clear. There is no more time to appease those who act with arrogance, whose knowledge falls short of their mistakes, and who try to sabotage the process by pursuing only their own interests. What must be voiced in every sphere is that the peoples of Turkey no longer have a second to lose in the struggle for a democratic society where they can live freely with their language and identity, where labor is not extinguished, and where democracy can truly flourish.”
Not only a national question
Kaya underlined that workers and laborers living in both Turkey and Kurdistan must recognize that the Kurdish question is not only a national issue and added: “We must not forget that capitalist modernity has positioned itself at a strategic point in order to sustain its own equation of exploitation. Workers and laborers must struggle for an honorable peace.”