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MAY DAY 2018: A BETTER DAY AHEAD

FOR DEMOCRACY AND BEAUTIFUL DAYS FILL THE STREETS ON MAY DAY!  

We are the majority of Turkey’s people.

We are 75% of this country – those who are trying to live paycheck to paycheck.

We are the true owners of everything that is good and beautiful in this country.

We are Turkey’s working class. As the crushing majority of the republic, we are ignored in the new regime.

We have born witness to which classes have benefited and which classes have suffered under this order since the state of emergency was imposed on 20 July 2016.

This order is an order that has taken advantage of the state of emergency to outlaw strikes and ignores union rights and freedoms.

This order is an order that rules by fiat, not by law, as it uses decrees to violate the constitution.

This order is an order that has used decrees with zero connection to the 2016 coup to change subcontracting laws that affect millions, ushering in discrimination and a loss of rights.

This order is an order that has transferred the unemployment fund to the bosses, even as 6 million jobless scream that they can’t make ends meet.

This order is an order in which everyone could lose their job with the stroke of a pen thanks to the state’s destruction of job security.

This order is an order that arbitrarily obstructs every democratic quest for rights, from hall meetings to marches and from petitions to attempts to go to court.

This order is an order that seeks to place all unions, democratic organizations, professional chambers, universities, newspapers and TV stations under the tyranny of a single man.

This order is an order that tells everyone, especially the working class, “to make do with what you have.”

This order is an order that has surrendered labour, nature, cities, sugar factories and the basic rights to education and health to capital, unrestrained profit and the drive for speculation.

This order is an order that learned no lesson from Soma and Ermenek, that abandoned workers’ health and job security to capital’s drive for profits and that killed 2,006 workers on the job in a single year.

This order is an order where decrees have supplanted the law, military stipends have supplanted social rights, conflict has supplanted dialogue and loyalty has supplanted merit.

This order is an order that clashes with the founding principles of the republic such as secularism and democracy, the motto of “Peace at Home, Peace in the World” and basic citizenship rights.

This order seeks to sacrifice democracy, justice, secularism, peace, and fraternity to a one-man government.

In this atmosphere, it’s becoming more and more difficult to defend the rights of the working class. In a place where one person is judge, jury, and executioner, no one’s rights are safe.

But we are stronger than this order. We are the multitude that objects to this order, expresses worry about its future and yearns for democracy, peace, and justice.

It is time for us, the working class, to raise our voice. It’s time for labor to lend its strength to the quest for democracy.

For better days UNITY, STRUGGLE, SOLIDARITY!

For better days FILL THE STREETS ON MAY DAY!

 

Turkish/Türkçe: https://disk.org.tr/2018/04/diskin-1-mayis-2018-afis-ve-bildirileri-cikti/

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