ANKARA, TURKEY, February 26 -— The strike of TEKEL tobacco workers is now more than 10 weeks old. The strike erupted after the government decided to close all the company warehouses, eliminating 12,000 jobs, as part of privatizing the government-run tobacco company. The strikers and their families descended on the capital and set up a tent-city to protest the job cuts.

Acording to Turkish labor law, workers who are laid off due to privatization are supposed to be placed in jobs elsewhere, with full benefits. But the only “job” the TEKEL workers have found is actually fighting for one.

The strikers and their supporters have clashed with the police, the bosses’ hired thugs. On December 16, the cops attacked a rally in front of the headquarters of the ruling AKP party. The following day in a nearby park, police erected barricades and attacked protesters with water hoses, tear gas and clubs. After that the workers moved their encampment to the headquarters of Türk-Is, the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions, who have failed to answer the bosses’
attacks with militant strikes or demonstrations.

Capitalist labor laws aren’t worth the paper they are written on, especially in the face of a worldwide financial crisis that is spreading poverty and war to everything it touches. The more workers fight back against these attacks, we create a better atmosphere to learn that a system that can’t provide jobs should be smashed. Poverty, war and racist terror are all the bosses have to offer. The only way to stop them is by building a mass international PLP and fighting for communism. That is the most important victory that we can win in the class struggle.