The struggle continues against the privatization of TUPRAS, Turkey’s biggest industrial company and the most important oil refinery in the country and the region. For more than 10 years, the Turkish working class has led with its unions an important struggle against privatization. Through this struggle it has succeeded to a certain extent in slowing […]
The struggle continues against the privatization of TUPRAS, Turkey’s biggest industrial company and the most important oil refinery in the country and the region.
For more than 10 years, the Turkish working class has led with its unions an important struggle against privatization. Through this struggle it has succeeded to a certain extent in slowing down the privatization offensive.
However, the last government in Turkey, which came to power in the 2002 elections, has accelerated — with the support of the United States — the privatization offensive. It has completely destroyed the SEKA paper-production industries. Now they want to pillage through privatizations Türk Telekom, Seydisehir Aluminium, and the steel companies Ergli, Iskanderun, and TUPRAS.
They are in the process of pillaging our natural resources and completely destroying agricultural production. Pétrol-Is, the union at TUPRAS, opposed the war in Iraq, raising the slogan, “The war in Iraq is an operation of privatization!” And now they have called for united and unconditional union struggle to stop this offensive.
All of this takes place as part of an international offensive against the workers and oppressed peoples through privatizations, through the destruction of social protection, and through the de-unionization.
Against this offensive, in defense of the workers’ organizations which are independent from Capital and the state, we invite all to support the campaign of Petrol-is around the slogan, “TUPRAS is our future, it can’t be sold off!”
ILC Int’l Newsletter No. 163 (Dec. 20, 2005)
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