How President Erdogan is marketing the state of emergency

Gaye Yilmaz

Tolga Tören

Workers and their unions in Turkey have been systematically attacked by their rulers over many years. But these attacks have sharpened recently, especially following the attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2016, after which large numbers of public servants were sacked and imprisoned. The president has used the subsequent state of emergency to intervene in workplaces where strikes are threatened; this has become a marketing strategy to woo business. We will discuss the repression of Turkish workers and ask why this president and his policies seem so popular.

From bad to worse
In the last 15 years, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) has passed numerous regulations against workers and their trade unions. Even more savage has been the President’s response to events harming working people. For instance, in May 2014, an explosion at a coal mine caused an underground fire, which burned for two days. It was Turkey's worst ever industrial accident: 301 miners died, some burnt alive, and others suffocated. Families of victims and also thousands of workers from other sectors were shocked when Mr. Erdoğan, on the evening after the disaster, said ‘These types of incidents are ordinary things’ (The Guardian, 2014).