ABSTRACT

“National Security” Perception in Turkey and Its Impacts on the Labor Movement and Trade Union Activities The term “national security” applied as a ground for a limitation to the fundamental rights and freedoms has first and foremost turned out to be a means of control by the armed bureaucracy over the civil rulers in Turkey. However, this concept has, in time, been employed by the civil rulers as a means of denying the democratic claims put forward by, and of oppressing the civil society. The fact that the “national security” as a ground of limitation to the fundamental rights and freedoms originally provided for in the constitution of 1982, a constitution framed in an extraordinary time, has continued to be kept in the constitution may be seen as a sign of the fact that the antidemocratic structure has been embodied in the whole system as well. The fact that such activities of the trade unions as strikes shall be restricted or deferred on the ground of national security, a very vague term providing the authorities with an unlimited power of discretion in the said sense has given rise to weakening and depowering the trade unions during not only the military rulings but also the civil rulings. In the last one hundred and twenty-five years of the trade union movements, the origins of which can be traced from one and half a century around, it is important to note that the country has been ruled under either the state of emergency or the martial law. In this article, the reasons of the shift from the concept of national defense to the concept of national security will be considered; what the political and social results of such conceptual switch in general, and the impact of such conceptual change, in particular, on the labor movements in Turkey may be will also be analyzed. How the concept of national security, which has employed in time to maintain control of the labor movements, has been used to hamper such activities of trade unions as strikes will be explored, and how this concept has also been pressed by the civil rulers into service to abnegate the democratic claims put forward by, and to oppress the civil society will be examined through the historical examples standing out to support this argument