Workers at some 20 textile plants in the Küsget industrial district in Gaziantep, Turkey, some 50 kilometers from the Syrian border, led a victorious strike against the bosses’ attempts to impose a below-minimum wages and increased workloads. 350 workers from Turkey and Syria were involved. The strike ended on January 5 after four days, when the bosses withdrew their demands of an increased production and offered a wage increase of 3,000 Turkish liras. The workers had been demanding 4,000.

Gaziantep-where the interim Syrian opposition government is based-is among the cities in Turkey that has taken in the largest number of Syrian refugees. The national atmosphere of racist hatred against refugees did not stop Turkish and Syrian workers in Küsget from fighting united until they defeated the bosses. This is the best demonstration of how only workers’ struggle can defeat nationalism and racism.

These workers so far have not organized themselves into a union, but have been supported by the Bırtek-Sen (United Textile, Weaving and Leather Workers Union), the most combative union in Gaziantep, a city where the textile industry dominates.

Bırtek-Sen was founded in 2022 by the former regional head of Dısk-Tekstil, the textile workers’ union belonging to DİSK, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions.

Two DİSK-Tekstil leaders in the past became general secretaries of DİSK and then entered parliament among the forces of the Kemalist Social Democrats. In 2021, another trade union in the textile sector-the Dev-Tekstİl (Unitary Union of Garment, Weaving and Leather Workers)-has harshly accused the DİSK-Tekstil of failing to support its laid-off members and of acting as a regime union in negotiations over a company’s collective contract in Istanbul. These factors point to this DİSK federation as one of the strongholds of opportunism, which dominates at the leadership of this combative union confederation.

Gaziantep’s textile sector has seen strong strikes before. We accounted for this in the report "The Series of Brave Struggles of the Young Working Class in Turkey" presented to our party’s general meeting in May 2021.

Between Feb. 10 and March 9, 2022, some 12,000 workers from 35 factories, most of them belonging to the textile sector, went on unannounced strikes for wage increases, as reported by the Birtek-Sen, which was founded in those days.

The Küsget foundry workers’ strike shows the way for workers in Gaziantep and throughout Turkey, where Turkish proletarians work side by side with Kurds, Syrians, Africans and others. It is necessary to fight together, united above different nationalities, organized in the combative trade unions, fighting for the unity of action of all the combative trade unions, for a united trade union front from below, a harbinger of the formation of the great class union that workers in Turkey and in all countries need more and more urgently.

For its liberation, the proletariat then needs its class party, the Communist Party, whose positions can only be internationalist. The International Communist Party wants to be the one world party of the proletarian revolution. It strives to unite the struggles of workers throughout the world, by building maximum class unity through a unitary class trade union front, and by linking the struggles of today with lessons from the past, going back to the days of the League of Communists and the three Internationals.

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