Hundreds of workers fired from municipalities run by the opposition parties continue their sit-ins months after municipal elections.
In the western province of Izmir, a stronghold of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), 274 workers fired by the district municipalities of Kemalpaşa and Çiğli have been staging a sit-in for nearly two months. They say they found out about the sacking when the Social Security Institution (SGK) notified them that the municipalities had fired them. A group of workers also staged a protest in the capital Ankara where the CHP's headquarters is located and complained no municipal officials have contacted them yet.
Özgür Genç, head of a local branch of a labor union representing the workers, said their “resistance” would continue until they are rehired. “We are promised before the municipal election that there won’t be a layoff. We don’t know why they fired us,” he told the local media.
Yusuf Çavdar, a 69-year-old worker of Kemalpaşa municipality, told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) recently that he was about eight months away from retirement before his firing. “I had no job-related problems. I want my job back,” he said.
Yağmur Doğan says she was working at a municipality-run library before she found out that the library was shut down. “I phoned the municipality and they told me that I was sacked,” she says.
In the east, dozens of workers are staging a similar sit-in outside the municipalities won by the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which is accused of having links with the terrorist group PKK. Members of the local branch of the Hizmet-İş labor union have been staging a sit-in outside the southeastern province of Diyarbakır’s municipality, amid scorching weather. Ercan Kahraman, head of the union, told Sabah newspaper that the DEM Party, which also won several district municipalities in the province, started mass firings shortly after the March 31 election.
“We are fighting for our rights,” he said.
In Van, more than 800 workers were laid off by the municipalities controlled by the DEM Party. They complain that the party’s candidates made it an election pledge that nobody would be fired after the election.
Municipalities claim that fired workers were hired only months before the election and justify the layoffs with the mounting debts of municipalities that have forced them to downsize.
