Extended Summary

This study examines the discourses of three workers’ confederations, Türk-İş, Hak-İş and DİSK, and reveals how effectively they form a hegemonic strategy in the face of the political and economic crises of the 1990s. At the heart of this analysis are two important complementary theories and methods: Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The former provides the concepts of “hegemony, discursivity, nodal points, articulation, antagonism, logic of difference and equivalence” to conceptualize the hegemonic capacities of agents in a political struggle. The latter allows us to fathom an order of discourse through social practices, social structures and social events and to accentuate the methodological reading of texts in terms of discourse analysis and discursivity. In addition, with the aim of understanding the historical variables in unionism, for this study, the texts produced by the unions and the texts of the officials speaking on behalf of the unions play an important role in the analysis of the hegemonic relationship (Fairclough, 1995; 2006).

To summarize briefly, hegemony is a form of a political relationship and agents act in the area of discursivity to fix meaning by articulating floating elements and empty signifiers to produce discourses. Discourse production in a political relationship helps to understand how a political agent constructs her own particular identity that represents ‘difference’ to the differences of other agents. On the other hand, a struggle of different agents against a common enemy with exterior discursivity necessitates a logic of equivalence, in which each agent suspends their own identities/differences to build up such a common struggle in producing a hegemonic strategy (Laclau and Mouffe, 2012; Laclau, 2007). In this context, Türk-İş, Hak-İş and DİSK represent three different identities and act within the order of union discourse throughout the history of unions in Türkiye. However, in the 1990s, their relationship with each other and with the political powers entered a process in which the antagonistic relation among themselves dissolved. As a result, the confederations formed ‘equivalences’ in the face of the 1994 economic crisis and April 5 measures, February 28 political crisis, and the economic crises of 1999 and 2001. The social and economic antagonisms that constitute the nature of the crises emerged from political antagonisms in the 1990s and led to “a surplus of meaning” in the discursivity of politics. Considering the crises in question as historical moments, this study reveals the function of the discursive nodal points of the confederations against them.

Due to the effects of the 1980 coup in Türkiye, the activities of DİSK were banned until the year of 1992 and the competition between Türk-İş and Hak-İş characterized the trade union struggle until the early 1990s. ‘Bahar Eylemleri’ and ‘Zonguldak Grevi’ became historical turning points and reconstructed antagonisms in trade unionism and politics. Both of them opposed the economic and privatization policies of the ANAP government, causing ANAP to lose its power, and had significant effects on the identites of the confederations as a grassroots and spontaneous workers’ movement. In 1992, the activities of DİSK were released and the DYP-SHP-CHP coalition government announced the April 5 economic measures package in the face of the 1994 economic crisis and the confederations acted in a logic of equivalence by establishing ‘Democracy Platform (Çalışanların Ortak Sesi Demokrasi Platformu)’ and fixed the meaning by forming its nodal points around the floating signifiers of ‘democratization’ and ‘common voice of the employees’.

In 1996, the increase in social, economic and political antagonisms and the heterogeneity of economic and political demands led to the emergence of a new political power, the Refahyol Government. This political process, with the February 28 political crisis, determined the relationship between trade unions and politics. At the same time, the antagonism among the confederations also surfaced under the political determination of the crisis. While Türk-İş and DİSK took part in a chain of equivalence called ‘Beşli Girişim’ and united on the discourse of opposition to ‘reactionism’, Hak-İş took its place on the opposite side and articulated all discursive elements to its struggle around ‘the coup’ discourse. One of the unique aspects of this process is that the labor and employer unions came together and established an equivalence system around a common discourse and within a platform by pushing back the class antagonisms between their political identities. Following the February 28 process, the DSP-MHP-ANAP government came to power in 1998 with the fall of the Refahyol Government from power. The economic crises of 1999/2001 left their mark on this process. The equivalence chain against the crisis emerged as the Labor Platform (Emek Platformu) and the discursive nodal point was the anti-IMF, which once again united Türk-İş, Hak-İş and DİSK on a common line of struggle.

In sum, this study manifests the summary of two main results based on the analysis of the discourses produced by the confederations in the 1990s. First, the hegemonic capacity of the confederations remains within the discursive order and determinism of political polarization and political parties. Second, the confederations does not emerge as hegemonic agents in terms of constructing a discursive order and trade union movement that transcends the political discourses determined by political crises.