HDP Labor Commission co-chair, Şaziye Köse, issued a written statement on the occasion of the Week of Combating Hunger between June 1-7.

Köse said, “Today around 2.5 billion people in the world live below the hunger and poverty line. 60 percent of the working population in Turkey has an income equal or below the minimum wage and at least 20 million people actually live below the hunger and poverty line. The number of people living under the poverty line added to those who lost their jobs, reaches 30 million."

The statement continued: “The capitalist system produces incredible wealth for a very small fraction of the world's population. At the same time it produces poverty and hunger for the vast majority of the population. This system, despite the crises it has experienced, continues to transcend humanity, nature and civilization at the expense of destroying and inflicting savagery on humanity.

Having opened its doors to neo-liberal policies in the 1970s and 1980s, Turkey has brought neo-liberalism into the economy of the state with the decisions taken on 24 January 1984. The AKP, which has been in power since 2002, has been more willing to implement these economic policies than any government in the past, applying neoliberal policies at their wildest and most advanced stage.”

The statement added: “High inflation, rapid and high increase in food prices, decline of real purchasing power, costs brought by the increase in the exchange rate caused hunger and poverty rates in Turkey to reach one of the highest levels in history.

We also see how the institutions and country resources, which emerged as the product of social labor, were offered to a handful of elites, gangs, mafia and supporters through the relations of politics and mafia.”

Köse continued: “The government left the people alone coping with hunger and coronavirus during the pandemic process. Neither we nor the workers will ever accept this life, this inequality. This is not a matter of fate: we reject this mentality. Our duty is to make hunger, unemployment, poverty and labor exploitation the main agenda in every street against the manipulation created by the government through gangs. Once again, we call on all the laborers and the oppressed to increase the struggle against this system that creates hunger, poverty and inequality."