This Brutality Must End!

Statement by TKP Central Committee on the workers' massacre at the HABAŞ iron and steel plant

https://www.tkp.org.tr/en/agenda/this-brutality-must-end/

On 9 November, an explosion at the HABAŞ Iron and Steel plant in Aliağa, İzmir, killed 17 workers and injured many others. The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) condemned the disaster as a workers’ massacre, holding the company’s owners and the capitalist system responsible for the loss of workers’ lives.

Immediately after the explosion, TKP members went to the site and met with the workers’ families. The Party has also been closely monitoring the condition of the injured workers through doctors who are Party members. On 9 November, TKP organised a protest in Aliağa, where the factory is located, followed by another protest on 10 November outside HABAŞ’s headquarters in Istanbul. 

In the following statement, TKP calls for the immediate nationalisation, without compensation, of all HABAŞ enterprises and all other large enterprises in Turkey. The Party demands an end to the exploitation of workers and the sacrifice of their lives for the profits of capitalists:

This Brutality Must End! 

A massacre took place on Monday, November 9, at the HABAŞ Iron and Steel plant in Aliağa. Part of the factory was reduced to rubble, leaving many workers dead or injured. Throughout the day, the factory management and state authorities could not even manage to identify the dead and injured workers or provide their families with reliable information. Government officials who made statements appeared so oblivious to the massacre that they described it as an accident. Just last month, we lost another fellow worker to a workplace murder at the same plant. Less than a month has passed, and now we have lost seventeen more fellow workers. We are concerned that the death toll will rise further. 

In addition to iron and steel production, HABAŞ is a holding company with major investments and operations in various sectors, particularly industrial gas production. The company itself boasts that it ranks first in Turkey’s iron and steel exports. Thousands of workers are employed in the company’s enterprises, whose annual turnover runs into billions of dollars. At issue here is a company that controls enormous wealth. The Aliağa Iron and Steel Plant is one of its largest enterprises. It is a plant where workers earn wages below the poverty line and work under harsh conditions. Workplace murders and injuries are a constant occurrence at HABAŞ. 

The owner of this plant and the company to which it belongs is Mehmet Rüştü Başaran. His fortune is said to be around $1 billion. His name appears on lists of the world’s richest people. 

Reports will now be prepared on the technical causes of the massacre, and an investigation will be conducted. In all likelihood, neither the reports nor the investigation will address the real causes of the massacre. Not a single word will be said about the greed and insatiable hunger for profit of the company and its owner. How, driven by that greed, they have turned Turkey into a dumping ground for scrap steel, poisoned the air and water of Bakırçay (a river basin in western Turkey, where Aliağa is located), exploited our fellow workers to the bone and taken their lives will most likely find no place in those reports. In all likelihood, workers and certain managers singled out as responsible will be found at fault. 

Yet everything is plain to see. This system of monopolies places the exploitation of labour, the plunder of the country and the endless accumulation of wealth above everything else. In pursuit of this, it has no hesitation in sacrificing the country, the people and workers’ lives. 

What must be done is clear. All the wealth held by these monopolies, which threaten the country and human life, must be seized immediately. As must be done with all large enterprises in Turkey, every enterprise belonging to HABAŞ must be nationalised immediately and without compensation. Iron and steel production must be carried out in the interests of the country’s development and the people, with workers’ health and safety guaranteed under all circumstances. Workers must be guaranteed dignified working conditions and should receive what their labour is worth. 

The massacre at the HABAŞ Iron and Steel Plant in Aliağa is nothing other than the brutality of the system of monopolies. And yes, this brutality must now come to an end. 

Not one more worker must die so that capitalists can grow even richer.