Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Limits of Autocratisation: Actors and Institutions of Democratic Resilience, Venice, İtalya, 18 - 20 Kasım 2022
Turkey's authoritarian transformation pose increasing challenges against
unionization processes. While the decline of workers' economic and social
rights during such transformation created a renewed impetus to unionize,
barriers to unionization equally increased and diversified. Taking three recent
unionization experiences (Bel Karper, Yemeksepeti, Termokar) as its case
studies, this paper explores the dynamics between class organization and
authoritarian statecraft. By thinking autocratization and unionization together
— two phenomena that are scarcely analyzed together in the Turkish context — we
show how workers gain class consciousness thanks to their unionizing efforts,
which put them at odds with the current regime regardless of their prior
political affiliation. We contend that the process of unionization under
authoritarian rules necessarily expands include political demands in addition
to economic ones and becomes a space of struggle against the authoritarian
logic at large, whether that be the antidemocratic practices of the regime or
the top-down bureaucratic attitudes of unions.