May 1st

MAY 1ST

For Rights, Law, and Justice: Every Day Is May 1st!

Today is May 1st. Yet we cannot celebrate it as a "holiday." Because in this country, workers and laborers have been left with nothing to celebrate.

We live in a geography racing toward the peak of income inequality. In a country where the wealthiest one percent holds more than half the wealth of the entire population — our labor is stolen, our lives are cheapened, our future is darkened.

Turkey is among the countries where exploitation is most intense. Living below the poverty line has been made the "norm." Unionizing is equated with crime, demanding rights with terrorism, and organizing with prohibition. The "sentence" handed down in the massacre at Soma, where 301 miners lost their lives, is in fact the ruling order's expression of the true value it assigns to workers — through impunity. This is just one example. Every day brings news of another workplace murder, every day another laborer is deemed expendable by a system: We do not accept this order!

The dominant ideology struggles to conceal these truths. Media has been silenced, institutions corrupted, and consciences suppressed. But we will not be silent! Through art, through words, through action — we will part the curtains and reveal the truth. Because cultural labor is also working class, is also labor, is also struggle.

May 1st is not a single day — it is the name of a consciousness. Our task is to spread this consciousness street by street, institution by institution, stage by stage. To build the united power of labor. Because only together can we change things. Only together can we win.

Enough! We demand justice! We demand what is rightfully ours! For a dignified life, a secure future, and honorable work — We speak out as cultural workers:

Every day is May 1st! Struggle everywhere! Shoulder to shoulder for rights, law, and justice!

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

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