Mass struggles against rising unemployment in Turkey

Barış Demir

Three million people in Turkey are officially unemployed, a rate of 8.5 percent that remains unchanged since the second quarter of the year, according to Labor Force Statistics from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

The official unemployment rate was 9.2 percent in the third quarter of 2023 and 8.7 percent in the third quarter of last year. But amid a deep economic crisis, high interest rates, tight monetary policy, and declining investment, the apparent decline in unemployment does not reflect reality. As with official inflation calculations, the unemployment rate is based on controversial criteria that are designed to meet government targets.

A more accurate picture of unemployment levels in Turkey is the labour force participation rate, which measures the total number of employed and unemployed people able to work. While there is a working-age population of 66.5 million (aged 15 and over), the labor force stands at 35.5 million, for a labor force participation rate of 53.5 percent. This is low by international standards. The global labour force participation rate was 61 per cent in 2024, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). In the European Union, the labor force participation rate was 75.8 percent in the second quarter of 2025.

When measured against Turkey’s 32.5 million jobs, the ratio of working people to the working-age population is 49 percent. This means that one in every two working-age people is not working. Despite this, the unemployment rate remains at 8.5 percent due to the criteria used to classify someone as unemployed.

Economist Mahfi Eğilmez lists the criteria required for a person aged 15 and over to be officially considered unemployed as follows: (1) Not having worked for even a single day in any paid or unpaid job in the last 4 weeks; (2) Having used at least one job search channel in the last 4 weeks; and (3) Being available to start work within 2 weeks.

This means those working in temporary jobs, those who have not applied to an employment agency in the last month, the chronically unemployed, or those who have lost hope of finding work are not counted as unemployed. For these reasons a more accurate measure of the unemployment rate in Turkey is “broad-based unemployment.”

When considering underemployment, potential labor force, and the unemployed, it becomes clear that unemployment has risen steadily and sharply. According to TurkStat data, the broad-based unemployment rate was 29.4 percent in the third quarter of 2025. This rate was 22.6 percent in the same period of 2023 and 26.8 percent in the same period of 2024.

While employment increased in the services and construction sectors compared to the previous quarter, the industrial sector saw a 147,000 decrease. The decline in industrial jobs does not mean a decline in production. According to TurkStat’s October production index data, industrial production increased by 2.88 percent on an annual basis.

A decline in employment coupled with an increase in production means an increase in the rate of exploitation. According to a recent report in Evrensel newspaper, “The average actual weekly working hours rose from 42.9 hours at the end of last year to 43.9 hours. This means that the average worker in Turkey now works four hours more than the legal weekly working hours.”

The sector that saw the sharpest decline in industrial employment was textiles and apparel. Apparel Manufacturing decreased by 81,000 people (13.14 percent) over the past year, falling to 538,756 people. Textile Product Manufacturing also declined by 42,000 people (9.18 percent) during the same period, falling to 423,547 employees. The number of workers in these sectors has fallen below even the levels seen in 2020, when the pandemic began and partial lockdowns were in place.

These sectors, which rely heavily on exports, have declined due to tight fiscal policies, such as high interest rates and low exchange rate policies. The effects of supply chain disruptions and increased customs duties are also being felt. However, the entire burden of the sector’s decline has fallen on workers.

Company owners evade paying workers’ due wages and compensation by declaring bankruptcy or entering concordat agreements after complaining about high wages and costs. Many are shifting production to Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) in Egypt, where the minimum wage is less than one-third of that in Turkey (the monthly minimum wage in Egypt is approximately $150, while in Turkey it is $520). Goods produced in QIZs in Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories can access the US market directly, without tariff or quota restrictions, subject to certain conditions.

Abdullah Kiğılı, a leading capitalist in Turkey’s ready-to-wear sector, said last month: “The state has abandoned ready-to-wear and textiles. Matters are getting to the point where we will have trouble finding manufacturers. This is the biggest disaster awaiting us. Production will stop in six months. Factories in Anatolia are closing. Production is shifting to Egypt.”

Textile companies have made enormous profits for decades through government subsidies and intense worker exploitation. Now, these companies are eliminating jobs and trying to seize accumulated wages and compensation, pushing workers to resist.

In Tokat city, 800 workers at the Şık Makas textile factory, which ranks among Turkey’s 500 largest industrial companies, launched a work stoppage at the beginning of October after not receiving their wages for 66 days. After the walkout, the workers were dismissed without receiving severance pay. In support of them, the people of Tokat city gave significant backing to the “Bread and Justice Rally” held last Sunday.

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Workers are not only fighting against the company, but also against the destructive role played by the Öz İplik-İş Union, affiliated with the Hak-İş confederation. A worker speaking to Birgün said: “The Öz İplik-İş representative told us, ‘The boss is powerful, we are no match for him.’ He tried to force us to start work even though we hadn’t been paid. He hurled insults at us that even the boss wouldn’t say. He attacked the workers and beat up a female worker. Is this what unionism is all about?”

Workers at Şık Makas face state pressure and threats. The summons of worker representative Buse Kara for questioning on November 10 over social media posts, her referral to court on charges of “threatening President Erdoğan,” and the imposition of house arrest constitute an attempt to intimidate all workers. Kara must be freed immediately.

Ultra-right gains in Chilean election dominated by anti-immigrant, law-and-order campaigns

Mauricio Saavedra

José Antonio Kast of the fascistic Republican Party [Photo: @joseantoniokast]

In the most right-wing campaign since Chile’s return to civilian rule 35 years ago, the general elections held last Sunday strengthened the radical-right, populist, and fascistic conglomerations in the Congress, which will now control 90 of the Chamber of deputies 155 seats.

Unity for Chile, the incumbent alliance including the pro-1973 coup Christian Democrats, President Gabriel Boric’s Broad Front, the Stalinist Communist Party and the Socialist-PPD, Radical, Liberal and Humanist parties lost 11 seats. In the Senate the ruling coalition gained one seat reaching 20, three less than the 23 now held by the right.

In the presidential race, Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party and candidate of Unity for Chile, was the front-runner in the first round with 26.9 percent of the vote, not enough to win outright. Her main contender, José Antonio Kast of the fascistic Republican Party came a close second with 23.9 percent.

The country now heads to a second round vote scheduled for Sunday 14 December. Johannes Kaiser, a fascist Libertarian with 13.9 percent of the vote, and Evelyn Matthei of the Pinochetista Independent Democratic Union (UDI) with 12.5 percent, have already pledged their support for Kast, the son of a Nazi German officer who escaped to Chile via the so-called “rat line” after World War II and collaborated in the Pinochet dictatorship’s repression.

Another presidential contender, Franco Parisi, a free-market economist who heads the right-populist Party of the People, came a close third with 19.7 percent of the vote.

All the candidates, from Kast and Kaiser to the Maoist Eduardo Artés and the Stalinist Jara, focused their campaigns on xenophobic anti-immigrant appeals in combination with vows to get “tough on crime,” promising to shower the murderous Carabineros police, intelligence and state apparatus with infinite resources.

All the presidential hopefuls campaigned heavily with this message in the predominantly mining regions of the north, which received no government assistance, funding, resources or any infrastructure to cope with the influx of refugees and immigrants from Venezuela and other parts of Latin America. The National Migration Service estimates 336,984 undocumented and irregular immigrants entered Chile over the last ten years.

In a modern tragedy, seven million people fled Venezuela beginning in 2015, when the Obama administration imposed crippling economic sanctions that were ratcheted up by the next two US administrations, and which plunged the mass of the South American nation’s population into dire hardship. With the doors closed to the United States, desperate Venezuelans detoured to neighboring Colombia (2.85 million), Peru (1.54 million), Brazil 648,200), Ecuador (444,800) and Chile (532,700).

The exodus of Venezuelans took a sharp upturn with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic as the working class internationally was forced to pay for the shutdown in international trade. The world economy, stagnant since the 2008 financial meltdown, fell into deep crisis causing inflation levels not seen since the 1990s and forcing up prices of basic staples amid conditions of double digit unemployment.

The Chilean ruling class had been thrown into a profound crisis of rule in late 2019, when long-standing and deep-seated opposition to capitalism, the state and the civilian political caste brought millions into the streets of Santiago, Valparaíso, Concepción, Antofagasta and every other regional city. The mass uprising’s three general strikes and the largest demonstrations in the country’s history defiantly opposed President Sebastián Piñera’s imposition of a state of emergency that left 36 dead, hundreds mutilated and thousands detained and tortured in the ensuing mass sweeps.

The ruling class relied heavily upon the corporatist trade unions, the Stalinist Communist Party and the pseudo-left Broad Front to disorient and divert anti-capitalist sentiment behind appeals to replace the authoritarian constitution that Gen. Augusto Pinochet imposed after taking power in a US-backed military coup in 1973.

Beginning in 2019, the predominantly rightist corporate media saturated the airwaves with nightmarish scenarios of cities besieged by crime and a country facing an extreme security crisis. It explicitly associated this crisis with the struggle for democratic and social rights, vilifying the mass mobilizations as an explosion of criminality.

Student strikes and school occupations against dilapidated infrastructure and lack of resources now were labeled as delinquency, while shantytowns built by desperate immigrants and the homeless on occupied land were alleged to be infested with narco-trafficking and criminal gangs. The deliberate aim of this rightist-backed media offensive was to cultivate among more backward sections of the population xenophobic demands to expel migrants and for an iron fist against crime.

Piñera could only proceed with this agenda because the Stalinist Communist Party along with Boric’s Broad Front worked might and main to smother the latent revolutionary situation of 2019 with cynical promises of social reforms if elected. The Chilean “left” also promoted the shibboleth of the parliamentary process and of “change through the ballot”—a rude lie especially for the youth, the sick, the elderly, migrants and the indigenous communities, which represented the most vulnerable and oppressed sections of the working class.

During the 2025 campaign, every candidate pledged to deal with “illegal” migration. The fascists and populists, being more adept at dog-whistling and emboldened by the US president’s evisceration of the American Constitution as the whole oligarchy turns towards dictatorship, pulled out all the stops.

Parisi at one televised debate promised to landmine the tri-border area that Chile shares with Bolivia and Peru. Kaiser proposed during the election campaign to detain all undocumented migrants, including children, in transit camps before expulsion. He also promised to send “illegal foreigners with criminal records” to El Salvador’s infamous mega-prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), while Matthei proposed to make irregular entry into Chile a crime and to “close the border” within one year, using satellites, drones, and a new border police force.

Not to be outdone, Kast’s “Border Shield” program promises to build five meter high walls, electric fences and three meter deep trenches along the border while increasing the presence of the Armed Forces. In April 2024, Kast visited El Salvador where he met with the fascist President Nayib Bukele and conducted a “technical” tour of CECOT with the intention of implementing something similar in Chile.

Kast has also drawn inspiration from Trump and the European fascists, meeting with kindred spirits in Spain, Italy and Hungary in May 2024, and participating in the Budapest Conservative Political Action Conference. There he paraphrased Trump claiming that “hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants entered Chile clandestinely. And they never left. Among them were criminals, hire assassins, members of international gangs, rapists, and abusers.”

He continued, “We are going to close our borders. We are going to build detention centers. We are going to apply tough measures so that they cannot work, so that they no longer receive subsidies, so that they cannot send resources abroad.”

The fascists promise to commit crimes against human rights; the pseudo-left government has enacted them. More than 4,350 undocumented immigrants have been expelled by the National Migration Service established in 2021 by the late billionaire president Piñera and employed to the full during Boric’s administration. In 2024 alone, 1,100 immigrants, predominantly Venezuelan nationals, were expelled while another 12,130 immigrants were threatened with an expulsion order.

The Boric government is also forcibly evicting tens of thousands of families living in shantytowns, many of them immigrants, following the signing in of the “Law of Usurpations” in November 2023.

The same law, which was designed to protect with lethal force the private property of developers, large landowners, mining, forestry and other sectors of the Chilean capitalist class, is being used against the Mapuche indigenous people claiming ancestral lands. Almost from the moment Boric assumed power, he declared a state of emergency over the regions of Biobio and Araucanía—historically Mapuche territory—imposing virtual martial law, while using the authoritarian State Security Law against indigenous leaders.

Boric has also pushed through a battery of repressive laws that eclipses anything passed in the last 35 years of civilian rule. These include a law bringing together the various intelligence apparatuses and broadening their spying powers, a revamped Anti-Terrorist law, measures that retroactively protect state agents from prosecution for using lethal force and a law that orders the military to protect public and private “critical infrastructure.”

At the last televised debate on 11 November, the presidential candidates were asked whether they would support Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. All the right candidates said yes and with gusto. Jara said: “I couldn’t disagree more with Maduro’s regime, but international law must be respected, and I am not in favor of endorsing an armed invasion of another sister country.”

Jara, in true Stalinist form, lied. Her partner in crime, Boric, became President Joe Biden’s attack dog within South America, speaking at all the international forums on behalf of American foreign policy attacking Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua as authoritarian to ingratiate himself with US imperialism. His services rendered assisted in their own way the Trump administration’s attempt to reassert Washington’s hegemonic control over the hemisphere.

Police state dictatorships are being scaffolded internationally in line with the drive to war abroad and against the working class at home. No one more so than “Washington, which is driven to seek by means of criminal violence solutions to intractable problems rooted in the contradictions of US and global capitalism. There is an appearance of lunacy in the war aims of US imperialism in Latin America. It cannot reverse the rise of China as South America’s premier trading partner with bombs and missiles, outside of an all-out world war. But that, along with drive toward fascist dictatorship, is the road upon which it is marching,” the WSWS wrote 13 November.

Latin America’s Pink Tide governments, which in an earlier period postured as an alternative to what they called “neo-liberalism,” are today aiding and abetting the Trump Administration’s preparations to invade Venezuela. At the same time, the Maduro government, representing the interests of sections of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and foreign capital, is incapable of making any genuine anti-imperialist appeal to the working class and the oppressed masses of Venezuela and the Americas.

Divisions in US Fed opening up

Nick Beams

The minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s October meeting released on Wednesday show that members of its governing body are deeply divided on the direction of interest rate policy and the widely expected further rate cut at its December meeting, previously regarded as a near certainty, is very far from a done deal.

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]

The divisions reflect the highly uncertain direction of the US economy. On the one hand it appears to be powering ahead boosted by the massive capital investments, running into trillions of dollars, in the building of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.

On the other, however, broad sections of the economy are either stagnant or experiencing a downturn while major corporations are carrying out mass layoffs often involving tens of thousands of workers in a single hit.

And even as the AI deals have produced a surge on Wall Street, there is increasing nervousness that the boom could be heading for a bust because revenues generated by AI will be insufficient to finance the massive capital investment.

The divisions at the October meeting, which decided on the second quarter point percentage cut in rates for the year, centered on whether another cut would be made at the next meeting. The Financial Times (FT) said the minutes underlined “the deepening schism over borrowing costs.”

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report said the “minutes showed a committee as divided as any in recent years over what to do at its next gathering.”

“In discussing the near-term course of monetary policy, participants expressed strongly differing views about what policy decision would most likely be appropriate at the committee’s December meeting,” the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting said.

The divisions were reflected in the October decision which saw a three-way split. While the majority backed the view of Fed chair Jerome Powell for a quarter percentage point cut, Trump ally Stephen Miran called for a half-point cut while Kansas City Fed president Jeff Schmid called for rates to be kept on hold.

At the time of the decision Powell pointed to the growing mood for a halt in rate reductions by cautioning the markets that a further reduction in December was not a “foregone conclusion.”

The strengthening opposition to further rate cuts was indicated in the minutes. They showed that while “most participants judged that further downward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate would likely be appropriate,” at the same time “several of these participants” indicated the December could be too soon.

The uncertainty was expressed throughout discussion as recorded by the minutes. They said that “several” members had said they would favor a reduction in December “if the economy evolved about as they expected over the coming intermeeting period.” However, “many” suggested that “under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for the rest of the year.”

The opponents of a rate cut, of whom Schmid has so far been the spokesperson, fear that inflation is starting to surge again with the rate remaining at 3 percent, significantly above the Fed’s target of 2 percent.

Those in support of a further cut argue that inflation resulting from the tariff hikes of President Trump will be a one-off and the Fed should look through them. Their opponents maintain that, as in the pandemic, businesses will pass on the additional cost. Underlying this position is the concern that if that takes place it will induce further wage struggles by the working class.

The more hawkish members of the Fed, which besides Schmid include Boston Fed president Susan Collins and Fed governor Michael Barr, maintain inflation is too high at 3 percent and that growth remains resilient.

Their opponents, one of whom is Christopher Waller, a Fed governor and one of the leading candidates to become Fed chair when Powell steps down next May, maintain that a softer labor market warrants a further cut.

In remarks in London on Monday he said his “reading of the data” led him to favor a further rate cut in December. He said the labor market was “still weak and near stall speed” while inflation had only shown “relatively small effects from tariffs” and that expectations for prices over the next few months were “well anchored.”

New York Fed president John Williams has also expressed support for a further rate cut this year but has maintained that any decision has to be based on the data. But the 40-day government shutdown has meant that regular data has not been available and the Fed will not have the usual range of statistics at its December meeting.

Given the problems caused by the shutdown, September numbers released yesterday, which showed both a rise in job creation and an increase in the unemployment rate, are hardly a useful guide.

It is yet to be seen how the apparent pushback against a December cut will impact the markets under conditions where Wall Street had regarded it as a near certainty and how it may interact with other concerns.

One of these is that the AI boom has reached its peak. This week the Bank of America said that 45 percent of global fund managers identified an AI bubble as one of the biggest risks to the market.

The warnings have centered on “circular” funding arrangements, such as that developed by the leading chipmaker Nvidia in which it makes large capital investments in companies which then buy its products, the increasing role of debt in financing AI deals, and the widening gap between capital spending and expected revenue.

Earlier this week, Wall Street was on tenterhooks over the release of Nvidia’s quarterly earnings with the WSJ noting that “rarely has an earnings report from a single company been greeted with such nervous anticipation.”

Before the report was issued after hours on Wednesday, it was predicted if it came below expectations Nvidia’s shares would drop by more than 6 percent with a similar rise if they exceeded them.

In the event the company sales reached a record $57 billion for the October quarter with predictions they would go even higher as Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang declared that “we have entered the virtuous circle of AI” and that it is “going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.” But even with the Nvidia result and the boosterism by Huang, the markets fell.

Besides having to set its monetary policy in increasingly uncertain conditions, the Fed is also having to deal with indications of possible financial turbulence centering on the ultra-short repo market. This is a market where in order to obtain cash overnight, financial firms use Treasury bonds as collateral repurchasing (hence the term repo) the next day.

In the recent period the interest rate in this market has risen above the federal funds rate indicating a tightening of liquidity.

Fed governor Lisa Cook, who is responsible for financial stability, said yesterday the debt-financed hedge funds involved in Treasury market trades were making it “more vulnerable to stress.” Her concerns focused on the so-called basis trade where investors borrow massive amounts of money to take advantage of tiny differences between the price of a bond in the cash market and its equivalent in the futures market.

Last week Williams held an unscheduled meeting with Wall Street dealers over the operations of the repo market. According to the FT it came at a time “when banks, investors and officials are concerned about the signs of stress in an arcane, but vital corner of the US financial system.”

Two days ago, a Reuters report noted that the cost of overnight borrowing in the repo markets had stayed “stubbornly high and is expected to remain elevated going into year-end despite recent Fed easing, adding another layer of stress to already fragile financial markets.”