DİSK- Devrimci Yapı-İş Union, Özgür Karabulut (August 4, 2019) Özgür Karabulut: He has been a manager since 2015, and president since 2017 at Dev Yapı-İş—a union in the construction sector that has a small number of members, but strives to perform effective efforts. 20 days after the 3rd (Istanbul) Airport protest held in September 2018, he was taken into custody on charges of provocation and was later arrested. He was detained between October 5 and December 5, 2018. The 3rd Airport has been a construction site known for the ecological destruction it has caused and work accidents that occurred since 2013. As Dev Yapı-İş, we have been there since 2015. We tried to unionise workers or interfere in rights violations; we had new members. This has always been a construction site with high production pressure and high turnover. At one point, it became an employment area where almost all of our friends worked for some time and then left once they found a better job. There were hundreds of subcontractors. According to our investigations, their numbers reached up to 700. Of course it was very difficult to organise workers in such a messy picture. Even though it was only on paper, a union (refers to Yol-İş Union) was organised at the main company and it lead a collective agreement. Yet, except these couple of thousands of workers, ten thousand subcontracted workers were not union members. Therefore, even though we did not have the competence to carry out collective agreements as a union, we addressed these workers’ problems, ensured that they received their unpaid wages, etc. Time after time, there were protests related to unpaid wages and food, especially before national/religious holidays and vacations. In 2018, three large protests took place at the site. The one held in February 2018 was against the pressure to complete work rapidly. These protests, which were usually attended by 2 to 3 thousand workers, generally resulted in workers’ demands being met and the dismissal of those who had been leading the protest. Yet, the one held in September 2018 was different. This time, the course of the protest changed due to the presence of İnşaat-İş specialists at the site and our fast reaction to the protest. This was a protest with much publicity. Actually, IGA,100 which undertook the construction, also used it to its advantage. We were already saying that it [the construction] would not be complete by October 29. The protest was their excuse. Indeed, they were able to postpone the opening date twice after that. Following the protest, the anticipated performance was not met. They called in the gendarmerie to supervise the workers. After the protest, around 3000 workers were taken into custody, 600 of them were taken to police stations, and the remaining were kept at the construction site. The custody period was extremely brutal and did not comply with existing law. Many workers were unofficially taken into custody. Extraordinary measures were taken. But productivity was very low now. New workers who were recruited after the protests struggled adapting etc. Of what we know, around 3000 workers packed their stuff and left the site, seeing that working conditions were unbearable here. One of the reasons this protest was criminalised to this extent by the public was the high number of young Kurdish workers among the workers. We observed that there was a possibility of dialogue, but people had a stronger reaction once the gendarmerie was called in. It was also our failure that no real results were achieved despite strong public support. Before this protest, we did not have direct contact with the main employer IGA. They did not deal with us because we were criminalised. Moreover, we were always confronted with Yol-İş—the Union that entered a collective agreement with them. Our main dispute was the union’s lack of concern for the problems of subcontractor workers and acceptance of the employer’s boundaries as absolute. Yol-İş is not a grassroots union. It is dependent and formed as a result of relations with the employer. We cannot ignore its victories for the industry, but this was its position concerning the airport. İnşaat-İş, which is a small union like ours, also called upon the company, but the demands were also unreciprocated. But I should also add that even though İGA did not address us directly, it met the demands of the subcontractor workers to avoid problems, and even sometimes warned the subcontractor company and ended its contract. The demands that were voiced during the large protest in September were quite archaic. Normally, the state should have stepped in much earlier as a result of frequent inspections. These [conditions] are all stated 100 İGA: it is a consortium that was established on October 7, 2013 to construct and operate the Istanbul Airport for 25 years. Its co-founders are Kalyon, Cengiz, Mapa, Limak, Kolin (which later withdrew from the consortium), which are among construction companies that have mostly been grown by winning public tenders since the 2000s. These companies are 86 C O L L E C T I V E R I G H T S O F W O R K E R S U N D E R T U R K E Y ’ S C O N T I N U O U S S TAT E O F E M E R G E N C Y T R A D E U N I O N R I G H T S I N E U R O P E A N A N D E U R O P E A N - A F F I L I AT E D E N T E R P R I S E S known for their close ties with the current government. INTERVIEW SUMMARIES 87