EXTENDED SUMMARY

There are resistances, strikes, and occupations that have written their names in the history of the struggle of the working class in Turkey: Kavel, June 15-16 Uprising, Tariş… These resistances have taken their place in the history of labor as if they will never be forgotten and have experiences worth passing on to future generations. However, sometimes some impressive experiences are unfairly left in the dusty pages of history. Yeni Çeltek resistance is such an example. Although the Yeni Çeltek resistance was a local resistance that took place in the Suluova-Merzifon region of Amasya in the 1970s, when the social struggle and thus the workers’ movement was on the rise, it has instructive experiences in terms of the Turkish working class struggle.

The Yeni Çeltek resistance refers to a workers’ struggle that started with the organization of Yeraltı Maden-İş in 1976 at the Yeni Çeltek Coal and Mining enterprise and continued throughout the process that ended with the 1980 military coup.

The 1970s in Turkey was a time when politics, economy, and social life were in complete crisis. The structural crisis of capitalism, which is effective worldwide, hit the Turkish economy as well. The economy came to the point of collapse as the import substitution accumulation model started to get blocked. A deep crisis of government in the political arena manifested itself for a long period of time. In social life, the sharpening class struggle and socialist movement have had the capacity to shake the state authority. The crisis Turkey has entered triggers and sharpens the class struggle and the workers’ movement. The Yeni Çeltek resistance developed as a workers’ struggle starting from 1976 until 1980 under these social, political, and economic conditions of the 1970s.

What makes the Yeni Çeltek resistance unique is the fact that it creates a different organizational experience that embraces the workplace and even the region. This organizational form, led by Yeraltı Maden-İş in the Yeni Çeltek enterprise, is called “councils”. Councils are worker committees formed by groups of 20-25 workers at the workplace. The council experience in Yeni Çeltek has presented one of the most successful examples of not only workplace democracy but also in-union democracy, which is rare in Turkey.

The councils (workers and workplaces councils) and the tradition of their struggle have revealed a self-organization experience, which has shown that the “producer can be the ruler”, spreading throughout the region starting from Yeni Çeltek. Workers have learned that they can reshape not only their working life but also their own social life within the framework of a social organization. They also have conveyed what they have learned to the people of the region, and they have created a consciousness in this direction.

The peasant who sells his beet to the sugar factory; the pitchfork worker who unloads the sugar beet from the farmer’s tractor to the factory; Yeni Çeltek, which supplies coal to the sugar factory; the local people, who need coal for fuel and therefore Yeni Çeltek… These ties bind all local people together and enabled the Yeni Çeltek resistance to create a tradition of organization and struggle that spread throughout the region. The tradition of organized struggle, created by Yeni Çeltek and spread throughout the region, has also drawn regional workers, who are not directly related to this enterprise, to the struggle. Regional organizations with a wider scale and political perspective than workplace-based organizations also emerged in this process. They acted together with Yeni Çeltek workers and Yeraltı Maden-İş. The regional organization, in which Yeni Çeltek is at the center, has also begun to be accepted as an alternative governing body of the people of the region.

The extent of the Yeni Çeltek resistance, including the whole region, has led employers to develop different methods to end this resistance. After the disagreement in the collective agreement in 1980, Yeraltı Maden-İş went on strike, the employer announced that it had closed the quarries on the grounds of economic loss. Yeni Çeltek workers did not recognize the decision to close the workplace. They did not leave the workplace and continued production.

Although the Yeni Çeltek resistance had a special place as a unique experience in the Turkey of the period, it was a part of the revolutionary breakthrough that swept the whole country. Its fate has not been independent of the fate of the country’s workers. In these conditions, the September 12, 1980 coup, brought the end of the Yeni Çeltek resistance, not its own dynamics. The resistance of Yeni Çeltek was defeated as part of a general defeat of the working class and socialist movement by a 1980 coup.

The resistance of Yeni Çeltek deserves to take its place in the pages of labor history as one of the bright examples of workers’ struggle with its union organization, its experience of workers’ self-management, the joint struggle committees established with the workers of the region and thus the effectiveness shown in the organization of life in the region. This article aims to contribute to the Yeni Çeltek resistance taking the place it deserves in the history of labor and the discussion of the meaning of worker self-management in terms of class struggle through the experience of Yeni Çeltek.