Turkey's top capitalist Koç Holding continues to make astronomic profits through Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corporation (TÜPRAŞ), a formerly state-run company that was privatized during the rule of Justice and Development Party (AKP).
In 2005, a consortium of Koç Holding and Shell bid over $4 billion to acquire the 51% of the corporation during the initial years of the AKP government. Making profit more than the privatization bid of Turkey’s only oil refinery, Koç Holding has announced its net profit in 2017 as around $1,1 billion.
"Increasing its amount of production by one million tones in comparison to last year, TÜPRAŞ realized a production of 28,9 million tones in 2017," said the TÜPRAŞ administration, adding that the company broke the records of the previous year, 2016.
It is striking that Tüpraş has witnessed super-profits particularly during the state of emergency in Turkey, as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan echoed the pro-capitalist implementations when he talked in a meeting addressing top capitalists of the country, saying, "We make use of state of emergency to ban strikes".
Moreover, four workers were killed and two injured on October 11, 2017, when an explosion rocked at TÜPRAŞ oil refinery in western Turkey. "It is not technical dysfunction, but the capital's greed to make more profit," Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) said in the statement. "Our worker brothers were killed only because the Koç family wants to profit 2, 3 and 10 times more," it added.
As Turkey’s top capitalist Koç Holding circle is enlisted as one of the richest persons according to Forbes, workers face anti-labour impositions and occupational murders at TÜPRAŞ refineries and other Koç Holding workplaces. While most of Turkey’s public assets were privatized during the rule of AKP, the ongoing state of emergency has further escalated the exploitation in the country.
