Murat Tepeçınar, who lost his brother in the explosion in Sakarya, has said that the businesspeople "didn't even attend our funerals. we are not their enemies.
"What happened has happened to our lives, brother. He had three children. The irresponsible ambition of making money played with people's lives," says Murat Tepeçınar, who lost his brother Sebahattin Tepeçınar in the explosion at a fireworks factory on June 3.
Six workers have died and 126 have been wounded in what was the seventh explosion in 13 years at the factory.
Tepeçınar says that his brother had been working at the same factory for 10 years and talking about their "very dangerous" working conditions. There was "intense work" at the factory before the explosion, he says.
Tepeçınar says his brother had problems in his ears after one explosion and another explosion had occurred on his off day.
"I was doing construction at another factory, five or six kilometers from where the explosion occurred. I thought the blast was where I worked. A few minutes passed, a friend from the village called me and said the explosion happened in the fireworks factory.
"I called my brother, could not reach him. I immediately went to the factory, but they didn't allow me upstairs. In the forest, there were those who escaped the explosion. So I started looking for my brother, I asked those who escaped. They said, 'Sabahattin has survived, but we do not know if he went down or not, we do not know.' They made me feel relieved. Everyone I saw said the same thing.
"But we could never find my brother. We waited, searched, looked at the hospital lists, asked the authorities, and did not get any information. Nobody gave us exact information.
"We learned later that my brother came in after the blast. He tried to bring out the injured, the carriable ones. He brought five or six people. But he entered to bring out our fellow villager Havva, another explosion occurred. Neither could get out of that explosion."
"They tried to run away with computers"
Tepeçınar says he believes the announced death toll was correct: "The information the authorities and hospitals give is the same. This is a small place anyway. Everyone knows one another. If there was a missing one, if it was hidden, it would be heard, known."
He adds that ensuring the security of workers and taking measures to reduce the risk of an accident are not up to the workers but to managers.
"This explosion is the mistake of the managers. As a matter of fact, they caught the son of Yaşar Coşkun the son of the owner of the factory, while trying to run away with computers.
After his elder brother Sadettin, the twin of Sabahattin, managed to go upstairs, he saw the attempt to remove computers and documents, which were later delivered to the gendarmerie, says Tepeçınar.
Footage allegedly showing factory owner's relatives trying to remove computers:
"Managers could have taken measures"
"I asked the workers how the incident happened. Everyone I talked to said that they have piled up the materials they produced in the place they work. They continued to produce while the material was accumulating.
"This means that there was an overload of powder in the workplace. Therefore, the accumulated material is what caused the explosion to be much heavier."
Had the managers of the company sent the products to depots or created a storage yard, the explosion wouldn't have occurred, says Tepeçınar.
"The executives did not take steps even though they knew that. They endangered people's lives. What happened, in the end, happened to our lives.
"Previously, a woman burned in the same place, she suddenly caught fire. If you don't take measures for that, you commit homicide. This is a homicide. I'm not charging somebody with something. Are the managers or the owners of the factory? Who is responsible for that?
"They didn't offer condolences"
After the explosion, the Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (MÜSİAD) visited Hendek and organized a dinner with its members. After reactions on social media, it removed the post on the dinner and stated that it was organized to think about "what could be done for our worker brothers."
"I don't know who or what they are. Their own world, one lives. They reassured one another. That doesn't concern me. What concerns me is that they didn't even come for condolence. They were impudent, immodest," Tepeçınar says. "They didn't attend funerals. We are not their enemies."
"What happened happened to our lives, brother. He had three children. The irresponsible ambition of making money played with people's life. They might not have done this on purpose. I'm not charging anyone. We are not the ones who will charge, put on trial. But it could me more careful, these lives wouldn't have been lost." (HA/VK)
Haziran 2018'den bu yana bianet muhabiri. 2013'te bianet'te staj yaptıktan sonra bianet'in projelerinde de yer aldı. Expression Interrupted, susma24.com, Jıneps, Inside Turkey, tol.org gibi platformlarda...
Haziran 2018'den bu yana bianet muhabiri. 2013'te bianet'te staj yaptıktan sonra bianet'in projelerinde de yer aldı. Expression Interrupted, susma24.com, Jıneps, Inside Turkey, tol.org gibi platformlarda haber ve makaleleri yayınlandı. İfade özgürlüğü alanında birçok haber ve makaleye görüş verdi. Yazıları İngilizce başta olmak üzere Fransızca, İtalyanca ve Çerkesceye çevrildi. 8 Mart 2018’deki Feminist Gece Yürüyüşünde çektiği fotoğraflar İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesince sergilendi. 27. Metin Göktepe Gazetecilik Ödülünü kazandı. Erciyes Üniversitesi Gazetecilik mezunu.
Following the detention of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and more than 100 others, the Turkish lira lost value against all major currencies, with the US dollar and euro reaching record highs.
For the first time, the US dollar surpassed 41 liras, peaking at 41.64, while the euro rose above 44 lira, hitting a record 44.88.
However, the lira later regained some ground, with the dollar falling to 38 lira and the euro dropping to 42 lira. Economists attribute this recovery to intervention by the Turkish Central Bank.
The currency turmoil also triggered a surge in gold prices, with the price of one gram of gold exceeding 4,000 liras for the first time in history.
After the Central Bank’s intervention, gold prices gradually declined, dropping below 3,800 liras per gram.
The Borsa İstanbul stock exchange's BIST 100 index opened the day with a 6.87% decline, starting at 10,060.48 points.
'A hub of labor violations': İstanbul shipyard workers climb crane protesting unpaid wages
The workers highlight unlawful practices by employers, such as misreporting their wages as minimum wage and falsely classifying dismissed workers as "resigned." They claim the government turns a blidn eye to these violations.
Fourteen workers laid off from Kuzey Star Shipyard in İstanbul’s Tuzla district have been protesting since Mar 5 over unpaid wages and benefits. Four of the dismissed workers escalated their protest by climbing a tower crane at the shipyard yesterday, vowing not to come down until they receive their dues.
“We’re not just talking about having money in our pockets—our debts are piling up,” said İsa Balıkçı, one of the protesting workers. “When a person has to go home to their family with their head down, unable to look their children in the eye, they might as well be dead. That’s how we feel now.”
Balıkçı said that their struggle has left them with no other option. “We are in the middle of Ramadan, and the holiday is approaching. Forget about having money in our pockets; we’re drowning in debt. They have made us suffer like this for months," he said.
“We didn’t want to resort to this, but we had no other choice. Any father in Turkey would do anything for his children, and we were left with no alternative. This is our ninth day of protest. We kept going to the shipyard’s gates, but no one would listen to us. At one point, they made a promise, saying, ‘We’ll take care of it, we’re sorry.’ But we soon realized it was all lies. They deceived us.
“We won’t be fooled anymore. Now that we’re up here, we’re not coming down until we get what we’re owed. We can’t return to our children empty-handed. We refuse to sit at an empty table during Ramadan.”
Serkan Aksakal, another worker who climbed the crane, also described the protest as their last resort.
“We were laid off, and now we don’t even have money to buy a loaf of bread,” he said. “It’s not just us, our colleagues are in the same situation. On top of that, our rightful earnings were taken from us. We haven’t been paid our severance, our vacation pay, or our salaries. So we turned to our union for help.”
“There are four of us up here, and 12 more of our colleagues down below supporting us. Others have also come to show solidarity. We are here, and we are determined. We will not leave this crane until we get our money. No force can remove us from here unless we are paid.”
Months of unpaid wages
Kuzey Star Shipyard dismissed workers by claiming there was no more work available. However, the company had already failed to pay wages since December and has made new hirings since then, according to Aksakal.
“The claim that there’s no work is completely fabricated by the employers,” he said. “Whether there is work or not depends entirely on the subcontractor’s decision. For example, there is work inside the shipyard, but the subcontractor can automatically dismiss workers by claiming that the client hasn’t made a request. Over the past eight days of our protest, more than 500 new workers have been hired.”
“Unfortunately, no one seems to care about this. We work long hours under extremely difficult conditions,” he added. “We will not leave the shipyard until we receive what we are owed. My colleagues, our union, and I will stand our ground until we get our rights.”
Tuzla shipyards: A hub of labor violations
The dismissed workers are members of the Shipbuilding, Maritime Transportation, Warehousing, and Dockworkers Union (Limter-İş), affiliated with the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK). Hakkı Demiral, general secretary of Limter-İş, highlighted the widespread labor rights violations in Tuzla’s shipyards, describing the area as a “lawless zone.”
“When people think of Tuzla’s shipyards, the first thing that comes to mind is the lack of regulations,” he said.
According to Demiral, 25,000 workers are employed in the area, with 24,000 of them working under subcontractors. “The real wages of 24,000 subcontracted workers are not properly declared for social security purposes. Their salaries are deliberately misreported under the watch of the government and labor inspectors."
“For instance, a worker earning 60,000 liras is officially recorded as earning only 20,000–22,000 liras, with social security contributions based on the lower amount. Part of the salary is deposited in the bank, while the rest is paid in cash. This system directly impacts workers’ severance pay, pensions, and other entitlements because compensation and retirement benefits are calculated based on declared wages.
“We are constantly fighting against this injustice, but the arbitrary practices of the subcontracting system have pushed workers to their limits."
'Authorities turn a blind eye'
Demiral also revealed that on the fourth day of their protest, workers received their official minimum-wage salaries via bank transfers. However, the remaining unpaid wages, which were previously given to them in cash, were only transferred on the seventh day from a different account.
He stated that union lawyers calculated the workers’ total dues and sent the figures to the company. However, the employer has refused to pay severance and notice compensations to prevent setting a precedent for other workers.
Claiming that the Labor Ministry is aware of these unlawful practices, Demiral said, “These payments made to workers' accounts are completely irregular. The money is disguised as ‘loan repayments’ or ‘cash advances’ when, in reality, it is their rightful salary. If the Ministry of Labor conducted a proper inspection and simply asked any worker on the street, ‘How much do you earn?’ they would get the truth. A worker would say, ‘I make 60,000 lira, but my social security is based on minimum wage.’
"This system is no secret. The government, the Labor Ministry, and the inspectors all see it, yet they turn a blind eye.”
Dsmissed workers labeled as 'resigned’
Limter-İş lawyer Önder Özgür said employers falsely report laid-off workers as having resigned in official records.
“In Turkey, it is the employer who submits the termination notice to the Social Security Institution (SGK). The worker has no say in it,” Özgür explained.
“The law gives employers a lot of freedom in this regard, so they can choose any termination code they want. However, if a worker files a lawsuit, this code can be changed. The same thing happened to the workers at Kuzey Star Shipyard. Even though none of them resigned, they were listed under ‘Code 03’, termination by the worker. This is a common practice in the shipyard industry.” (AD/VK)
bianet muhabiri (Ağustos 2023). Atölye BİA 5-9 Ekim 2022 "Temel Gazetecilik Atölyesi" katılımcısı. Maltepe Üniversitesi Gazetecilik Bölümü'nü bitirdi. Aynı üniversitede, Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler...
bianet muhabiri (Ağustos 2023). Atölye BİA 5-9 Ekim 2022 "Temel Gazetecilik Atölyesi" katılımcısı. Maltepe Üniversitesi Gazetecilik Bölümü'nü bitirdi. Aynı üniversitede, Siyaset Bilimi ve Uluslararası İlişkiler Bölümü'nde çift anadal yaptı. Halkevleri 12. Halkın Hakları Basın, Sanat ve Dayanışma Ödülleri sahibi.
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