May 1st

MAY DAY

For Rights, Law and Justice: Every Day Is May Day!

Today is May Day. And yet we cannot celebrate it as a "holiday". Because in this country, workers and labourers have been left in no condition to celebrate.

We live in a land racing to the summit of income injustice. In a country where the richest 1% holds more wealth than half of the entire people, our labour is stolen, our lives are cheapened, our future is darkened.

Turkey is one of the countries where exploitation is at its most intense. Living below the poverty line has been turned into a "norm". Unionising is equated with crime, claiming rights with terrorism, organising with prohibition. The "sentence" handed down for the massacre in Soma, where 301 miners lost their lives, is in truth the expression — through impunity — of the real value this order assigns to the worker. And that is only one example. News of a new workplace killing every day, another worker written off every day: we do not consent to this order!

The ruling ideology strives to conceal these truths. The media have been silenced, institutions corroded, consciences suppressed. But we will not be silent! With art, with words, with action, we will part the curtains and show the truth. Because cultural labour, too, is a worker — a labourer, a fighter.

May Day is not a single day; it is the name of a consciousness. Our task is to spread that consciousness street by street, institution by institution, stage by stage. To grow the united power of labour. Because only together can we change things. Only together can we win.

Enough! We want justice! We want what is ours by right! For a humane life, a secure future and dignified work, as culture workers we call out:

Every day is May Day! Struggle everywhere! Shoulder to shoulder for rights, law and justice!

Long live labour, long live solidarity, long live our struggle!

Culture Workers' Union