Unwavering struggle of the Fernas’ miners in Turkey
Featured image: protest and clashes between the Fernas’ miners and the police in Ankara. Source: DuvarEnglish
The resistance of seven workers, who were fired because they were members of the Independent Mining Workers’ Union while working at Fernas Madencilik, continues after more than 20 days. Fernas is a mining company located in Manisa’s Soma district and owned by the ruling party AKP (Justice and Development Party) deputy Ferhat Nasıroğlu, deputy by the Batman province. This week, the workers faced severe repression by the old Turkish State, which since the first moment has firmly defended the interests of the company.
At the beginning of this week the workers brought the protest from Soma to Ankara. They read a statement in front of the Ministry of Labor. Afterwards the police attacked them when they wanted to carry out a rally in front of the Turkish Parliament. But this did not prevent them to continuing their protest, so they marched and read out a statement in front of the Miner’s Monument.
On 17th of September, 28 miners were detained after a protest in Ankara in front of the Fernas Madencilik headquarters. The workers traveled from Soma to Ankara, and when they wanted to protest, they were harshly attacked by the police. They defended themselves and struggled to keep their protest, many of them were detained.
On 18th of September the workers made a sit-in protest in front of the mine. Afterwards the Turkish repressive forces detained the Chairman of the Union, Gökay Çakır, and other four workers.
The miners of Fernas have made mobilizations across Turkey targeting the assets of the AKP deputy which is the owner of Fernas. For example they also organized a protest in the touristic city of Bodrum, in front of the Cape Bodrum Luxury, Ferhat Nasıroğlu’s hotel. The protesters were detained together with their lawyer without any justification. Today they carried out a rally in Istanbul to demand respect for their right to unionize.
As Yeni Demokrasi has been reporting, those protests by the Fernas’ workers join many other workers mobilizations on the last weeks in Turkey. The workers in companies like Polonez, Mernes or AS Plastik are waging strikes against the companies and maintaining active their protests and mobilizations even though they are facing a harsh repression by the old Turkish State. The workers in Turkey are bearing the consequences of the imperialist crisis. They face a very high inflation and therefore high costs of living. Moreover the ruling classes usually reject the democratic rights of protesting against those bad conditions as well the right of unionizing.
They received wide solidarity by several forces. In Ankara, a rally was carried out by the Labor and Democracy Forces, of which Partizan is member in, in front of the Miner’s Monument in solidarity with the miners detained; slogans like “Fernas Workers Are Not Alone” were frequently chanted.
