Workers' struggle

"During the eight months of our resistance, we have seen that neither the government nor the opposition support workers. If you are a worker, all doors are closed in your face. Even the doors of the justice system..."

Lale Balta is the only woman among the workers who have been resisting their dismissal since 18 December 2008. Their employers used the economic crisis as an excuse.

Balta criticised the fact that the court case for the reinstatement of the Sinter Metal workers on 4 August has been postponed to 13 November.

She told bianet, "We will continue to resist until we get our rights back."

Worker Hasan Avcı said that the postponement had discouraged people, but that they were determined to continue.

"Not only a struggle for ourselves"

"The struggle of the Sinter workers is really the struggle of all the workers in Istanbul's Ümraniye Dudulu Organised Industrial Estate. If we win, then all the workers there win."

The gathering in Taksim Square on 5 August of the Sinter workers, who are members of the Birleşik Metal-İş trade union was supported by members of the youth union Genç-Sen, strikers from atv and Sabah newspaper, members of the DİSK trade union federation, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the Socialist Party, the Platform for an Independent Revolutionary Class, Genel-İş and Deri-İş trade unions, Alper Taş, the chair of the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) and Tony Murphy, political consultant for the Europe Metal Workers' Federation (EMF).

The demonstrators walked until Galatasaray Highschool, demanding that the 380 dismissed Sinter workers be reinstated.

In speeches in front of the school, the government was criticised for looking on as employers were using the law to exploit workers.

Murphy said that Turkey's attitude towards workers' rights was worrying and said that he would discuss the experience he had had in the Sinter court case with EU commissions and workers' meetings in other countries.

Around 200 people took part in the protest. (BÇ/AG)