Turkey’s labour movement keeps focus on social issues as authoritarianism rises, Global Labour Column, 20 April 2026

Tolga Tören

This article is part of a special series on current challenges in the world of work, developed from a workshop held at the University of Kassel in September 2025 by alumni, associates and friends of the Global Labour University.

Authoritarianism in Turkey has become more visible by the day, proving wrong the expectations harboured by international institutions at the start of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rule — namely, that the party would steer the country towards liberal democracy under the banner of moderate Islamism. Recent developments instead call to mind what Nicos Poulantzas wrote in Fascism and Dictatorship about the exceptional state: ‘Law no longer regulates: arbitrariness reigns’ (Poulantzas, 2018: 297).

Although there are many turning points in the AKP’s history that mark its slide into authoritarianism, this short piece focuses mainly on the developments of the past year, particularly the resistance that erupted in March 2025. The catalyst was the annulment of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s university diploma by İstanbul University on 18 March 2025, followed by his arrest one day later.

The issue is not the diploma

The annulment was widely understood as an attempt to prevent İmamoğlu’s candidacy in the 2028 presidential elections, since Turkish law requires presidential candidates to hold a university degree. His arrest — along with that of more than a hundred officers from İstanbul Municipality — triggered demonstrations that quickly extended beyond a reaction to his detention, making a range of broader social demands visible. Chief among these was the right to elect and to be elected, a point that requires some context.

In recent years, the AKP has made changes to the electoral system that created significant advantages for the ruling party. During the 2017 referendum, for instance, the Supreme Election Board (YSK) validated ballots that lacked the official stamp (Yılmaz, 2022). That same referendum brought the parliamentary system to an end, establishing a new regime defined by its supporters as ‘the Turkish-style presidency’, which concentrated all executive powers in the hands of the president.

Who wins İstanbul wins Turkey

There is a commonly accepted saying in Turkey: ‘Who wins İstanbul wins Turkey.’ The city has a consolidated budget exceeding 14 billion euros and produces 30% of GDP (TUIK, 2024; 2025). Until 2019, the AKP used all the rents and opportunities of the city — including tenders for infrastructural investments, services, megaprojects, and large-budget cultural projects serving the ideological hegemony of political Islam — to support capital groups aligned with the party. This helps explain the panic that followed İmamoğlu’s victory in the 31 March 2019 local elections.

In the wake of that panic, the 2019 İstanbul elections were annulled by YSK. Although pro-regime media claimed the opposition had stolen votes, opposition voters — fully aware of the power held by the regime — had in fact launched a significant organisational effort to protect their ballots. Despite the annulment, the strategy backfired: in the re-run election on 23 June 2019, İmamoğlu won again with an even higher percentage. He repeated this success in the local elections of 31 March 2024, making him the strongest alternative to Erdoğan.

The new social democratic municipal administration prioritised redistributive policies, including Kent Lokantaları (‘City Restaurants’), which provide affordable meals for students and the urban poor, as well as public healthcare centres and child education and care support. However, the resistance in March 2025 cannot be explained solely by the arrest of İstanbul’s social democratic mayor.

The main driver of the resistance is the social question

According to data from the Research Center of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK-AR), by January 2026, the broadly defined unemployment rate stood at 28.6%; only two out of ten unemployed individuals were able to access unemployment benefits; and the general price level and food prices had increased 25.7 and 38.2 times, respectively, compared to 2003. While the lowest income group receives just 6.3% of total income, the highest 20% accounts for 48.1% (DİSK-AR, 2025a; 2025b; 2026a; 2026b; 2026c).

Although the official rate of union density is 14.5% — a figure that counts only registered workers — the real rate is 12.3%. Collective bargaining coverage is lower still, at 9.6%, owing to bureaucratic barriers and the dismissal of many workers for their efforts to organise. In the private sector, the situation is worse: unionisation stands at 5.9% and collective bargaining coverage at just 4.3% (DİSK-AR, 2026d). Meanwhile, 46.7% of private-sector workers earn the minimum wage. In 2018, the minimum wage commission was restructured in a way that reflects the logic of Turkish authoritarianism: previously governed by labour laws, though still not fully fair, it was transferred to the organisational architecture of the presidency by decree (DİSK-AR, 2026e). The consequences of this shift were on display in late 2025, when Türk-İş, a member of the commission and the largest trade union confederation in Turkey, boycotted the 2026 minimum wage negotiations, citing the commission’s unfair and undemocratic structure.

Where things stand now

These conditions produced a strong public response in March 2025, most notably from university students. Labour organisations and progressive professional associations also actively supported the protests. Millions joined demonstrations that began in Saraçhane — the district where the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality is located — and quickly spread to other cities on the same day İmamoğlu was arrested.

The Saraçhane rallies were followed by a work stoppage organised by DİSK, academic boycotts, a mass rally with 2.2 million participants, and consumer boycotts. On 28 March 2025, trade unions affiliated to DİSK and the Confederation of Public Employees Trade Unions (KESK) organised a half-day work stoppage. The Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen) actively supported the academic boycott on 25 March 2025, after which it faced a legal investigation: its co-chair was sentenced to house arrest and its representative at İstanbul University was arrested. A total of 301 students were also arrested for participating in the protests.

Finally, a consumer boycott targeting pro-government media and businesses that had ignored the protests deserves mention. Although government representatives claimed the boycott had no impact on the economy, they continued to criminalise the action, accusing boycotters of targeting ‘national companies’. Many who called for the boycott were detained, including an actor and member of the Actors’ Union, while some union members were dismissed from the television series they starred in. The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) instructed universities to launch investigations against faculty members and students who took part.

İmamoğlu has now been in pretrial detention for more than a year. In March 2026, his mass corruption trial — involving 406 co-defendants, most of them former municipal employees — opened at the Silivri courthouse, with prosecutors seeking a combined sentence of up to 2,430 years; the European Court of Human Rights has since formally asked Turkey to respond to İmamoğlu’s application challenging his detention.

Permanent resistance

The arbitrariness of the regime can also be seen in the fate of a planned strike at Eti Maden, one of the country’s largest public mining enterprises. The strike, due to begin on 1 August 2025, was postponed for 60 days through a presidential decree issued just one day before — a postponement that amounted to a de facto ban. The move came during negotiations for the 2025–2026 Public Sector Collective Bargaining Agreements Framework Protocol, which covers more than 600,000 public-sector workers (Demir, 2025). The scale and persistence of labour resistance has only grown since. In January 2026, thousands of Migros warehouse workers launched wildcat strikes across seven provinces, rejecting a 28% wage offer as inadequate against inflation that independent economists estimated at over 50%; after 18 days of action — during which more than 140 workers were dismissed and nearly 100 detained — the workers secured improved wages, conditions, and the reinstatement of those fired.

In March 2026, BİRTEK-SEN leader Mehmet Türkmen was arrested — a reminder that state repression and labour organising remain locked in a cycle of confrontation (Çelik, 2026). Despite the arbitrariness, Turkey’s labour movement keeps the social question on the agenda.

References

Çelik, A. (2026) ‘Migros direnişinin öğrettikleri’ [‘Lessons from the Migros resistance’]. Available at: https://www.birgun.net/makale/migros-direnisinin-ogrettikleri-691300 (Accessed: 26 February 2026).

Demir, B. (2025) ‘Anger erupts as strike by 2,100 miners in Turkey is effectively banned’. Available at: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/01/urce-a01.html (Accessed: 16 February 2026).

DİSK-AR (2025a) ‘İşsizliğin görünümü’ [‘Unemployment outlook’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Issizligin-gorunumu-MART-2025-SON.pdf(Accessed: 14 April 2025).

DİSK-AR (2025b) ‘Enflasyon bülteni’ [‘Inflation bulletin’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Enflasyon-Bulteni-Nisan-2025.pdf (Accessed: 15 April 2025).

DİSK-AR (2026a) ‘İşsizliğin görünümü’ [‘Unemployment outlook’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Issizligin-gorunumu-Ocak-2026-rev.pdf(Accessed: 8 February 2026).

DİSK-AR (2026b) ‘Ücret kayıpları izleme raporu’ [‘Wage losses monitoring report’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/1-Ucret-Kayiplari-Izleme-Raporu-7-Ocak-2026-1.pdf (Accessed: 8 February 2026).

DİSK-AR (2026c) ‘Sendikalaşma ve toplu pazarlık raporu’ [‘Unionisation and collective bargaining report’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Sendikalasma-ve-Toplu-Pazarlik-Rapor-Ocak-2026-1.pdf (Accessed: 8 February 2026).

DİSK-AR (2026d) ‘Asgari ücret raporu’ [‘Minimum wage report’]. Available at: https://arastirma.disk.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/ASGARI-UCRET-2026-FINAL-rev.pdf (Accessed: 8 February 2026).

Poulantzas, N. (2018) Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem of Fascism. London: Verso.

TUIK (2024) ‘Gross domestic product by provinces, 2023’. Available at: https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=Gross-Domestic-Product-by-Provinces-2023-53575 (Accessed: 15 April 2025).

TUIK (2025) ‘The results of address based population registration system, 2024’. Available at: https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Bulten/Index?p=The-Results-of-Address-Based-Population-Registration-System-2024-53783&dil=2(Accessed: 15 April 2025).

Yılmaz, D. (2022) ‘The effects of the latest modifications on electoral laws in Turkey’. Available at: https://tr.boell.org/en/2022/09/13/effects-latest-modifications-electoral-laws-turkey (Accessed: 13 April 2025).

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