Kurdish workers treated like foreigners
Kurdish workers treated like foreigners
In an interview to ANF, Democratic Society Congress (DTK) member and Dev Saðlýk-Ýþ Union representative Ferda Koç remarked that the Kurdish workers in Turkey suffer serious violations of rights. Koç says that the Kurdish workers here are treated like 'migrant workers' and that the Kurdish society's modernization under the influence of the national freedom movement has been hindering the Turkish state's economic pressures on Kurds.
Pointing out that Kurdish workers constitute a remarkable part of "unsecured workers", Koç noted that these workers mainly join Turkey's labor army not in Kurdistan but across the Turkish territory. Koç underlined that this truth meant consideration of Kurdish workers as "guest workers" or "migrant workers" and added that; "Kurdish workers in Turkey suffer from the same treatment that all guest and immigrant workers across the world are facing. The main problems they face in their works are; receiving ill-pay in return for fatal and dirty works, insults, social exclusion, criminalization, poor conditions in housing, transportation and health as well as introversion in fear of failure to hold on to the life, ghettoization and imprisonment to closed society".
Referring to the guest and immigrant workers across the world that face the same problems, Ferda Koç said that; "Those workers are true 'foreigners' in the countries where they work under these conditions, like the Turks and Yugoslavians in Germany, Mexicans and Latinos in America and Northern Africans in France. The practice of guest/foreign labor developed as people suffering from a social devastation or poverty in their own lands started to apply for temporary or permanent works in countries with better conditions. However, the situation isn't the same in respect to Kurds who are citizens of the Turkish state but are forced to work as guest and immigrant workers because of the police brutality of the state and central authority's economic devastation in Kurdistan. In other words, the state created a 'lowerest' circle from Kurdish workers by means of political violence and economic pressure.
According to Koç, who thinks 'the Kurdish issue' lives in the labour market of the working class in Turkey, Kurdish workers constitute a labor group that puts a negative pressure on "social rights" including wages, working conditions and "conditions of labor re-production". Koç said the followings; "Needy Kurdish workers who are forced to move to big cities have to work under such aggravated circumstances that they have to bear with the lowest wages, worst working environments and quite ill living and housing conditions. Without defeating this negative pressure, the working class in Turkey will not be able to ensure an interclass balance of forces that would enable wages and living conditions compatible with human dignity. The working class in Turkey has tried to overcome this problem by 'excluding Kurds from the society' in an unrelistic expectation that they will go back to their hometowns. The core team of workers that the organized workers' movement is grounded on has counted unsecured working as the assurance for their own privileges; a state of affairs that we shouldn't see as distinguished from the racist and exclusionist attitude of organized workers towards Kurdish workers who are one of the basic reasons for unsecured working. However, neither Kurds will go back to their hometowns nor will the cost efficient unsecured working system be able to guarantee everlasting high salary and secured work for the core team of workers."
Author Koç remarked that the Kurdish labor force should create social measures in order to become a 'durable' participant of the labor market, noting that the organized circles of theTurkish working class should give a fight against unsecured working to make sure that this formation can take place. "It is an inevitable consequence that the most fragile, the most nondurable and therefore the most inclined group to accept most brutal conditions of exploitation in labor market is made up by the people who are forced to migrate, dispossessed of their sources of income, thrown into suburbs of big cities and are treated as if they were a 'threat' in an environment completely strange to them. The 'improvement of the position of Kurds in this labor market' is therefore a must to make sure that the labor market could be organized in favour of workers. It is apparent that a series of demands under the title of the Kurdish issue should be put forward to make Kurds 'durable' participants of the labor market. In other words, such a series of demands will make new contributions to the solution of the Kurdish issue", Koç noted and said the followings concerning the situation of the class movement in the Kurdish region;
"The Kurdish National Movement for Freedom is a public movement led by socialists. However, it seems the 'national' side of the movement is still standing in the foreground as it still has made no concrete moves for the organization of Kurdish workers as a specific group in the neoliberal capitalism of Turkey, despite the suitability of all objective and some subjective circumstances. Some think the Kurdish Freedom Movement's failure to progress as a 'class movement for freedom and equality' is a consequence of the lack of a strong working class in Kurdistan. However, the great majority of the Kurdish people is now made up of workers. I believe the 'matter of national freedom' should be verbalized with class concepts and the Kurdish issue should be brought to the table as a 'proletarian issue'.
Defining the Turkish state's policy as "deprivation of industry and trade and addiction of poor people to chairty-like incomes through various means such as welfare funds and health services for the uninsured", Koç underlined that "the neoliberal governments in Turkey have turned Kurdish provinces and districts to 'Reservoir Cities' which are therefore left by their people who move to other cities or countries, such as Germany, Russia, Arab countries and recently South Kurdistan, in an effort to make the life easier by working as immigrant workers.
DTK member and Dev Saðlýk-Ýþ Union representative Ferda Koç remarked that the AKP government's policy in Kurdish cities amied to addict needy Kurds to itself by means of grants, village-guard system, illegal income networks provided for its feodal collaborators. In addicting this circle of Kurds to itself, the state is practicing methods basing on feodal family structures and religious sects. The Kurdish society's modernization under the influence of the national freedom movement is hindering the expansion of these methods more and more every passing day."
Pointing out that Kurdish workers constitute a remarkable part of "unsecured workers", Koç noted that these workers mainly join Turkey's labor army not in Kurdistan but across the Turkish territory. Koç underlined that this truth meant consideration of Kurdish workers as "guest workers" or "migrant workers" and added that; "Kurdish workers in Turkey suffer from the same treatment that all guest and immigrant workers across the world are facing. The main problems they face in their works are; receiving ill-pay in return for fatal and dirty works, insults, social exclusion, criminalization, poor conditions in housing, transportation and health as well as introversion in fear of failure to hold on to the life, ghettoization and imprisonment to closed society".
Referring to the guest and immigrant workers across the world that face the same problems, Ferda Koç said that; "Those workers are true 'foreigners' in the countries where they work under these conditions, like the Turks and Yugoslavians in Germany, Mexicans and Latinos in America and Northern Africans in France. The practice of guest/foreign labor developed as people suffering from a social devastation or poverty in their own lands started to apply for temporary or permanent works in countries with better conditions. However, the situation isn't the same in respect to Kurds who are citizens of the Turkish state but are forced to work as guest and immigrant workers because of the police brutality of the state and central authority's economic devastation in Kurdistan. In other words, the state created a 'lowerest' circle from Kurdish workers by means of political violence and economic pressure.
According to Koç, who thinks 'the Kurdish issue' lives in the labour market of the working class in Turkey, Kurdish workers constitute a labor group that puts a negative pressure on "social rights" including wages, working conditions and "conditions of labor re-production". Koç said the followings; "Needy Kurdish workers who are forced to move to big cities have to work under such aggravated circumstances that they have to bear with the lowest wages, worst working environments and quite ill living and housing conditions. Without defeating this negative pressure, the working class in Turkey will not be able to ensure an interclass balance of forces that would enable wages and living conditions compatible with human dignity. The working class in Turkey has tried to overcome this problem by 'excluding Kurds from the society' in an unrelistic expectation that they will go back to their hometowns. The core team of workers that the organized workers' movement is grounded on has counted unsecured working as the assurance for their own privileges; a state of affairs that we shouldn't see as distinguished from the racist and exclusionist attitude of organized workers towards Kurdish workers who are one of the basic reasons for unsecured working. However, neither Kurds will go back to their hometowns nor will the cost efficient unsecured working system be able to guarantee everlasting high salary and secured work for the core team of workers."
Author Koç remarked that the Kurdish labor force should create social measures in order to become a 'durable' participant of the labor market, noting that the organized circles of theTurkish working class should give a fight against unsecured working to make sure that this formation can take place. "It is an inevitable consequence that the most fragile, the most nondurable and therefore the most inclined group to accept most brutal conditions of exploitation in labor market is made up by the people who are forced to migrate, dispossessed of their sources of income, thrown into suburbs of big cities and are treated as if they were a 'threat' in an environment completely strange to them. The 'improvement of the position of Kurds in this labor market' is therefore a must to make sure that the labor market could be organized in favour of workers. It is apparent that a series of demands under the title of the Kurdish issue should be put forward to make Kurds 'durable' participants of the labor market. In other words, such a series of demands will make new contributions to the solution of the Kurdish issue", Koç noted and said the followings concerning the situation of the class movement in the Kurdish region;
"The Kurdish National Movement for Freedom is a public movement led by socialists. However, it seems the 'national' side of the movement is still standing in the foreground as it still has made no concrete moves for the organization of Kurdish workers as a specific group in the neoliberal capitalism of Turkey, despite the suitability of all objective and some subjective circumstances. Some think the Kurdish Freedom Movement's failure to progress as a 'class movement for freedom and equality' is a consequence of the lack of a strong working class in Kurdistan. However, the great majority of the Kurdish people is now made up of workers. I believe the 'matter of national freedom' should be verbalized with class concepts and the Kurdish issue should be brought to the table as a 'proletarian issue'.
Defining the Turkish state's policy as "deprivation of industry and trade and addiction of poor people to chairty-like incomes through various means such as welfare funds and health services for the uninsured", Koç underlined that "the neoliberal governments in Turkey have turned Kurdish provinces and districts to 'Reservoir Cities' which are therefore left by their people who move to other cities or countries, such as Germany, Russia, Arab countries and recently South Kurdistan, in an effort to make the life easier by working as immigrant workers.
DTK member and Dev Saðlýk-Ýþ Union representative Ferda Koç remarked that the AKP government's policy in Kurdish cities amied to addict needy Kurds to itself by means of grants, village-guard system, illegal income networks provided for its feodal collaborators. In addicting this circle of Kurds to itself, the state is practicing methods basing on feodal family structures and religious sects. The Kurdish society's modernization under the influence of the national freedom movement is hindering the expansion of these methods more and more every passing day."
