Saime Harmancı, a houseworker, went to the private employment agency licensed by IŞKUR when her employer refused to pay her salary, but she was subjected to violence there.

Harmancı, who called the police on the day of the incident and received a report confirming that she had been beaten, complained about the institution.

The case has been heard in Istanbul 16th High Criminal Court and the court found Harmancı, who was subjected to violence, as "guilty".

Harmancı was fined 3 ,423 TL after being harassed and beaten for hours in the IŞKUR licensed private employment office. Unable to pay the debt, Harmancı became insolvent.

Despite all the evidence on her body that she was subjected to violence on the day of the incident, the court ignored these evidences. Stating that the prosecutor's office combined two cases in a single case, Harmancı said: "I was battered until I fainted. I was the one who filed a complain. But the prosecutor opened a complain against me before mine and they found me guilty. This is the kind of justice we have."

Responding to the unjust decision regarding Harmancı, the Domestic Workers Solidarity Union President, Gülhan Benli, said: "The state does not make legal regulations on the right of domestic workers to work, but takes decisions such as this. This ruling is the official statement that you can act as you wish when employing domestic workers, you can do anything.”

The intermediary companies that domestic workers apply to find a job claimed that they had witnesses no violence in the case of Saime Harmancı.

According to the 2011 Turkey Statistical Institute data, there are 150,600 domestic workers in Turkey. But according to the Domestic Workers Solidarity Union, the figure is actually over a million.

What happened?

Saime Harmancı, who worked as a domestic worker, was in Etiler on 7 October 2019, at the company D.I.K. which sent her to a house to work. The company received 4,500 TL from the employer as a commission.

Harmancı, who wanted to quit at the end of a month for various reasons, could not get her wages neither from the employer nor the intermediary company. Harmancı went to the company to claim her salary, but was beaten instead by the company officials in the bathroom of the company.