ABSTRACT

This study deals with the resistance of Yatağan workers having made the most long-termed struggle against the privatization in Turkey’s history, which lasted for 447 days as of the 16th of September 2013. The study is based on the interviews with workers, union administrators, union experts and local administrators who have actively participated in the resistance movement, as well as local and national newspaper reviews, and publications by Tes-Is and Maden-Is Unions. The study aims to analyze the underlying factors of the resistance of Yatağan workers, which they have succeeded to maintain for more than a year in a period when the working class as a social actor has been ignored for so long, and the strengths and weaknesses of the resistance. According to the findings, work place committees that are operated efficiently, workers’ awareness of precarity, their past experiences of struggle, the trust-based relationship which branch administrators establish with workers, and in relation to this, the case that the branch administration has a high capability for making the members mobilized and has already enabled workers to raise consciousness about the fact that their resistance is extremely important not only for themselves solely but also in the sense of national interests all constitute the strengths of Yatağan resistance. Considering the factors making the 2013-2014 resistance hard, these have been determined to be the major decline in the power of union headquarters and trade union movement in general, that Turk-Is has not given sufficient support, the decrease in the number of workers in the workplace, that the worker mass has had a more heterogeneous structure compared to the previous years, the negative effects of the 4-C implementation and that the government party has taken the advantages of constituting a single-party government to the full extent