Painful Report from İnşaat-İş Union: "Workers Are Being Killed Everywhere!"

ANKARA - The İnşaat-İş Trade Union has issued a striking statement on the recent worker deaths across Turkey, which it describes as 'work murders'. The union called for urgent measures to be taken, emphasizing that the bosses' "quest for maximum profit" and the lack of safety precautions, lack of supervision and lack of rules are the main causes of occupational homicides.

The union said that the worker deaths in the last few days alone are a mirror of the regime of exploitation and deregulation in Turkey. It was pointed out that work murders are becoming increasingly common wherever there is capitalist production, including construction, agriculture, factories, workshops, service sectors and roads.

Recent Work Killings

• Balıkesir: Zeynep Kanat, an 18-year-old agricultural worker, died when the tractor carrying workers to the field to pick tomatoes overturned. Four workers were injured in the accident. The lack of supervision and precariousness in agricultural areas came to the agenda once again.

• Eskişehir: Mehmet Taş, a worker at a mill in Beylikova district, died after falling into a feed crushing machine.

• Rize: In Çayeli, 60-year-old roofer Yahya Yıldız died after falling from the roof of a 3-storey building he was repairing.

• Izmir: Ismail Usta, a sea worker in his 40s working on a ship belonging to DGN Denizcilik, died after falling into the sea off the coast of Izmir.

• Şırnak: In Cizre, 27-year-old construction worker Yasin Ayıl died when an iron cutting machine went out of control and cut his throat.

• Hatay: In Erzin, 23-year-old Bayram Mart, a worker at the construction site of an Imam Hatip High School, was killed when he was hit by a backhoe backing out of a hole he was digging.

• Ankara: Muhammet Erdem, a 20-year-old worker at a factory construction site in Kahramankazan, died after being trapped under a concrete column when a crane rope broke.

• Urfa: Kadir Kayış, a 41-year-old worker who was electrocuted while repairing an electrical fault in a supermarket in Eyyübiye, lost his 7-day fight for life.

• Aksaray: Ahmet Kaşıkçı, 21, a subcontractor worker at a natural gas company in Ortaköy, died when an iron fell on his head while repairing the axle of a truck. It was stated that Khashoggi started work only 3 days ago.

• Samsun: Mustafa Peçe, an employee of Terme Municipality, died after falling from a pole he climbed to replace a faulty lighting lamp.

"The cost calculations made by the bosses in search of maximum profit, the measures not taken due to these calculations, and the heaviest consequences of the authorities supposedly in charge of supervising them not conducting the necessary inspections because this is actually a class policy and saying 'do as you wish' continue to be expressed through occupational murders," the İnşaat-İş Union emphasized that worker deaths are not a coincidence, but the result of a systematic exploitation regime. The union reiterated its call for the full implementation of worker health and safety measures to protect the right to life and for those responsible to be punished.