In 2013, Turkey's AKP government started demolishing Taksim Gezi Park, one of the few green areas left in central İstanbul, meeting with a mass resistance known as Gezi Resistance or June Resistance. Calling then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the government to resignation, these nationwide protests were targeting increasingly pro-marketist, authoritarian and reactionary rules of the government.
Analyses on the class character of the 2013 June resistance in Turkey were reflected as the extensions of political positions within Turkey’s left-wing. In fact, some saw the people and some saw a coup in Gezi; there were others who thought this mass movement would continue with barricades on roads. Apart from their differences, these positions have not been consistent. Each of them would lean towards the idea that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could be deposed of by elections. But this very idea that meant the role of the people would be limited to voting while getting rid of Erdoğan belonged to the capitalist class.
That means there still exists the class. First of all, there is a capitalist class that wanted to direct a grassroots movement before “the course of the movement is led somewhere else”. That is also why the praise by the liberal journalists such as Yılmaz Özdil and Bekir Coşkun for one of the capitalist families, Koç family, was not for nothing.
Lessons to be taken from the June resistance over class is important. It is unfortunately not sufficient to say that the left lost its bearings. The left has actually thrown its compass to the bottom of the sea.
That is one reason why the thesis saying that the June resistance was a middle-class movement found followers. This perspective, which from the very beginning heartily expressed that this uprising had a trans-class structure, has also added identity politics to the middle-class thesis. Accordingly, there were women, young people, LGBT community, Alevites, anti-capitalist Muslims, ordinary neighbourhood residents, students, etc. Everyone was there except for those who identified as “workers”. Moreover, it was argued that this diversity should not be confined by “traditional” concepts like “organisation” or “getting organised”.
To de-class, the class struggles are the raison d'etre of saviour liberalism. But, the real deformation occurred within the centres that could have pressed the left’s channels to popularisation. Instead of focusing on the different sections of the working class that showed up with the uprising, the left started chitchatting. Forming an electoral alliance with a queen of unidentified murders [Meral Akşener, the leader of fascist İyi Party] and an Islamic fundamentalist [Temel Karamollaoğlu, the leader of Islamist Felicity Party], openly or secretly trying to integrate the Kurdish movement into this alliance, calling this unprincipled politics “front against fascism”, etc. This has been the inspiration the so-called left drew from the June resistance!
However, the resistance gave important signals about the organizational dynamics of Turkey’s working class. The inspiration that left should draw from the resistance has to focus on these dynamics.
SO WHAT DYNAMICS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?
We should start with urbanization. Turkish capitalism experienced a rapid urbanisation over the last 10-15 years and this has brought a significant change in the structure of the working class. Today we have a more urbanised working class. The urban character of the working class was not only reflected on the streets in June, but also gave strength to the resistance.
Urbanization should be followed by the increase in service sector employment, the concentration of this employment in urban centres, the inclusion of white-collar workers in this, the increase in the employment of women, and the increase in young population.
The June resistance was not a class movement, but it had a working class character. It is this "urban" nature, the key to the transformation of the working class, which gives this character to the resistance.
But that's it. It would be too much, for the June resistance, to seek more on behalf of the working class.
It was massive and widespread, but equally unorganised. A class movement is the product of the organised action of the working class. Organized action can be carried to the popular level by the organisational representation of the working class. In June, the disorganisation of the working class prevented the class character of resistance from coming to the surface.
Moreover, workplaces in production and service sectors were not involved in the June resistance. The only exception was the NTV [Turkish nationwide television news channel] protest. The NTV protest took place as a typical worker protest organised at the workplace, happened at the workplace, targeting the bosses. Apart from this, the workers were "at work in the morning and out on the streets at night".
Then the weaknesses of the June resistance must be considered along with the characteristics that the working class brought to the fore. In order for the working class not to be caught unorganised once again in a popular movement...
WORKERS' PROTESTS JUST BEFORE THE JUNE
Let us go to the four months before the start of the resistance on May 30th. Between January and May, there were various levels of worker protests.
Workers of the Topkapı Anadolu Glass Factory, which Şişecam decided to close in January, occupied their workplaces with their families. Then the mining workers in Kozlu, Zonguldak, did not go down to the mines following the death of 8 workers in another mine managed by the Turkish Hard Coal Enterprises. This protest was followed by a mass rally by in Zonguldak by the miners. Concurrently, anti-privatisation protests of the workers of Yatağan, Yeniköy and Kemerköy Thermal Power Plants and affiliated mines started. The struggle for the unionisation of MNG and Yurtiçi [courier companies] workers turned into a resistance against atrocities. Public sector workers in the state-run postal services, PTT, and railway services started protests against the draft law, which was referred to the Parliament in March for the liberalisation of both of the institutions. At Koç University, subcontractor workers organised demonstrations with the support of students and academics. The workers of Mersin port occupied the port in protest of layoffs.
A significant part of these protests resulted in success. Şişecam workers gained the right to be transferred to other factories of the company. Workers who declined go down to the mine in Kozlu gained the right to unionise. Yatağan workers were successful in stopping the privatisation. Subcontractor workers at Koç University started working again. In Mersin, the harbour workers pushed back the anti-unionisation attack.
Just before the beginning of the June resistance, the working class was active and had victories even though the struggles were local. Then, in April, there was a strike in Çaykur [a state-owned tea producer company] in April and in Turkish Airlines in the middle of May. More than 20,000 workers were about to meet the June while on strike. But it did not happen. Both strikes were broken in the beginning. A tremendous boss-state co-operation played a role in breaking the strikes, but the blindness of the authorised trade unions in these workplaces played a role of equal impact. There were hundreds of airline workers who did not participate in the strike organised by the union yet they all joined the resistance in Gezi Park. The insecurity created by the unions has severely impacted the class character of the June resistance.
TRADE UNIONS IN THE JUNE RESISTANCE
During the uprising, the situation of the unions was pitiful. The pro-government unions kept themselves on the side of the government without fail. Some of the pro-government unions along with employer unions and capitalists' associations published newspaper advertisements calling the masses to return to their homes.
Leftist trade unions and organisations, including KESK, DISK, TMMOB and TTB, tried to support the resistance by calling for a general strike. But none of these strikes turned into a real job-quitting action. The general strike announced by DİSK with the title "We will stop working if the government does not stop" and KESK with the title "We will raise the fight against AKP fascism in the workplaces and the fields" were unsuccessful. Moreover, this move damaged the resistance rather than helping it. While the people were on streets, the unions confined themselves to press releases with a few hundred people in the name of a general strike while people continued working in their workplaces.
