Four Chairs at DeFacto's Door
Why Were Computing Workers in Halkalı This Evening?
Four Chairs at DeFacto's Door
Why Were Computing Workers in Halkalı This Evening?
A company puts four people out on the pavement, seats subcontracted workers in their places, and says "the matter is closed." Those who gathered in Halkalı this evening went to say that the matter has only just been opened.
The occasion for this piece: BilişimSEN (the Computing Workers' Union) held a press statement at 17.00 on Wednesday 23 September 2026 in front of DeFacto's headquarters in Halkalı, Istanbul. The video of the action is on the union's Instagram account; the statement text was published as a separate post. There was a single sentence on the banner: "Our comrades were dismissed unfairly; they will return to their jobs!"
Dear Young Comrades,
This evening after the shift, a group of people unfurled a banner beside Basın Ekspres Yolu, in front of a glass-fronted plaza. It was not a large rally; it will probably not find a place in the evening bulletins of the mainstream television channels.
But for most of you reading this, what happened on that pavement matters more than much of what is in the evening news. Because there, perhaps for the first time, we saw software workers, systems workers, data and product people in Turkey standing behind their own union's banner, in front of a retail giant's headquarters, over a named injustice.
Many of you are studying computing, or have just started your first job. The story you have been told so far was this: You are not a worker; you are "talent." The union is for the factory worker. If you are good the company will not let you go; if it does, another door will open.
What happened at DeFacto shows where that story ends. So we want to tell it from the beginning, in plain language: what happened, what the union wants, why it concerns all of us, and what we can do.
First the facts: what happened at DeFacto?
The information we have comes from the union's posts, from Evrensel reporter Barış Salık's account of those who followed the action, and from the Cumhuriyet report that announced the call to action. The company has so far made no public statement. So we set out the facts by saying who said them.
About two months ago, around July 2026, computing workers in DeFacto's technology unit were dismissed. According to the union's statement today those dismissed were four people, and they were dismissed "under heavy accusations." The vacant posts were filled with subcontracted workers.
On 15 September 2026 BilişimSEN first took the matter public with a post headed "What's New This Week at DeFacto Technology?" According to that post:
- Employees, including union members, were dismissed "purely so that their entitlements would not be paid, by slander."
- The firm refused the union's requests for a meeting.
- The firm, in the union's words, is "counting those who do not claim their rights as profit, and setting out to grind down those who sue for years."
- The union wrote its demand plainly: "We want the workers dismissed unfairly to be rehired at once. Otherwise we will continue our actions and share every detail with the public."
A note: in the 15 September post the number is given as three; in the 21 September call to action and in today's statement it is four. Evrensel's report explains the difference: at DeFacto Technology three computing workers were dismissed, and the fourth worker left in the same period after completing his social-security contribution days. The union is defending all four together; that is where the phrase "four computing workers" in the statement comes from.
On 21 September 2026 the union issued the call to action: "DeFacto, end the unlawfulness! We are gathering in front of DeFacto to raise our voice against the dismissal of four computing workers, against subcontracting and insecurity." The close of the call: "We are standing up for our jobs, our labour, our future! The DeFacto worker who resists will win!"
23 September 2026, today, at 17.00, the press statement was made in front of DeFacto headquarters.
The same evening, at 18.23, the union announced on its X account a development during the action: "Defacto Technology tried to physically obstruct our press statement. They had filled the front of the building with vehicles requested from the company Altur. But of course this could not stop us." In the action video, staff-shuttle vehicles lined up in front of the building can be seen immediately behind the group reading the statement. Altur is a company that runs staff shuttle transport.
Details from the action. According to Evrensel's report:
- The statement was read by Murat A., one of the dismissed workers. So the person speaking on the pavement was the subject of the dossier himself.
- Sosyal-İş, Dev Yapı-İş, TümİSG-SEN, Özel Basın-İş and Güvenlik-Sen, together with representatives of political parties, supported the action. The union also saluted this solidarity on its X account in the evening: "We stood together against the unlawfulness at Defacto Technology. Long live class solidarity!"
- BilişimSEN's general president Kıvanç Denizci said the hours of the workers inside had been changed so that they would not join the statement: "Today workers who would normally leave work at 5.30, at 6, are being sent home an hour early purely from fear of the press statement we are going to make here."
- The legal process is also continuing: mediation produced no result; a reinstatement case for the three workers is being heard in the labour court.
The text read at the action
We reproduce below, without any shortening, the text the union shared after the action under the note "the press statement we made in front of Defacto headquarters." We suggest you read this text aloud once; because the language of a union statement says both what it wants and how determined it is.
Dear press workers, dear public;
About two months ago, DeFacto, one of Turkey's retail giants, signed a decision it will not easily erase from its corporate history. Four computing workers who were part of the collective labour that brought the company to where it is today were dismissed under heavy accusations; the vacant posts were filled with subcontracted workers.
We are no strangers to bosses and managers trying to make workers pay for their own mistakes, wrongs and incompetence. But if DeFacto's management thinks it can put workers who have given years of labour to this company out on the pavement with a stroke of the pen and close the matter, it is mistaken.
From here we say plainly to DeFacto's management and those who take the decisions:
We will not leave workers' jobs, labour and honour to you!
Our demand is open, non-negotiable and clear: The four computing workers dismissed unfairly must be reinstated at once.
While you pile profit on profit, we will not allow workers to be crushed under this enormous wheel that began in textiles and now reaches other sectors. Workers will not pay the price of growth; the bill for decisions taken by managements will not be workers' unemployment.
We will stand, with our organised struggle, against the subcontracting order that makes computing workers cheaper, more insecure and easier to discard.
Let what happened at DeFacto be an example to those who think it is easy to take a worker's bread. This is only the beginning! We will not give up our struggle until the four computing workers are reinstated.
We announce this to the public with respect.
BilişimSEN — Computing Workers' Union
The shuttles lined up in front of the building
Do not read the union's note this evening as a small detail. It may be the most instructive scene in this piece.
According to the union's account, the company filled the pavement where the press statement was to be made with vehicles it had brought from a shuttle firm. So the company's answer to a press statement, to the exercise of a legal right, to a few dozen people reading a text on a pavement, was not an invitation to meet, a statement or a written reply. It was a wall of vehicles.
Set this beside a year earlier:
| September 2025 | September 2026 |
|---|---|
| 450 people are dismissed | Four computing workers are dismissed |
| Gathering in groups of more than three in the garden is banned | The pavement is filled with shuttle vehicles |
| Extra outside security is assigned | The vehicles are brought from an outside firm |
| Employees are not allowed to say goodbye | The union's requests for a meeting are refused |
| There is no organisation behind the workers, there are WhatsApp groups | There is a union behind the workers |
| Employees are not allowed up to the office floors | Workers inside are sent home an hour early so they will not join the statement |
| The ban works, the workers disperse | The obstruction does not work, the statement is read |
The left-hand and right-hand columns of the table show the same reflex: physically preventing workers from coming together. A year ago that reflex was the security guard in the garden; this evening it was the shuttle vehicles on the pavement and the shift-end brought forward. What has not changed is this: the company manages workers' gathering as a security problem.
The only thing that has changed is the last row. In 2025 the ban worked, because there was no organisation opposite it. In 2026 the obstruction did not work, because there was a union opposite it. The union's sentence is short: "But of course this could not stop us."
And notice this: why does a company become this uneasy about a text that is to be read on a pavement? If a four-person employment dispute really were a "justified" termination of the kind the company could defend, there would be no need to fear a statement read in front of the public. The effort to make it invisible is the best proof of the power of the visible. Capital never forgets something we often forget: workers standing side by side in public turn an injustice from an individual misfortune into a collective matter.
Young comrades, we do not know those vehicles' plates, their number, or who summoned them. What we know is this: if a company lines vehicles up in front of a press statement, it does not want to hear what that statement says. That is reason enough to read the statement more carefully.
What exactly does the union want?
Reading the statement together with the earlier posts, the demands have four layers. Separating them matters, because each objects to something different.
The first and non-negotiable demand: immediate reinstatement of the four workers. The union calls this "open, non-negotiable and clear." So if an offer of "let us pay a bit of compensation and close the matter" comes to the table, it has already been said that this is not an answer. The demand is not money; it is the job.
The second demand: restoration of honour. The sentence "we will not leave workers' jobs, labour and honour to you" is not accidental. When a dismissal is done "under heavy accusations," what the worker loses is not only a wage. Their reference, their name in the sector, the story they will tell at the next interview are taken as well. The union's sentence shows that the accusations themselves are also the subject of the struggle.
The third demand: to stand against subcontracting. Putting subcontracted workers in the place of four people is, in the union's eyes, the real meaning of this dossier. This is not a personal dispute; it is the changing of an employment model.
The fourth demand: meeting and transparency. The union says its requests for a meeting were refused, that if reinstatement does not happen the actions will continue, and that "every detail" will be shared with the public. So the union is leaving a door ajar. The gist of the message is this: either it will be talked about at the table, or everything will be talked about in front of everyone.
General president Kıvanç Denizci described at the action how that door has been closed until today: "For a very long time we have been trying to establish a channel of communication with DeFacto's management. We have been trying to sit DeFacto's managers at the same table over what our comrades have gone through. This is constantly refused; the ways of meeting are constantly closed to us." According to the dismissed worker, management did not agree to meet the union, union representatives or lawyers; when they went to the workplace to meet they were not let in: "They were a closed door to us at every turn."
What was the accusation? Inventory, cameras and selective responsibility
The statement text said "heavy accusations" but did not say what the accusation was. Evrensel's report fills that gap. According to the dismissed worker's speech at the action and the private assessment he gave the paper, events unfolded as follows:
- It was found that some devices were missing from the company's inventory. Neglect was imputed to three workers over those losses.
- Yet the people who uncovered the shortages, counted them and reported them to management were these same workers. After the finding they also asked for the camera recordings and warehouse entries to be examined. A few weeks later they themselves were dismissed.
- The physical security of the warehouse, the installation and running of the camera system, and the setting of entry and exit rights were not in these workers' job descriptions. Other employees, interns and subcontracted staff could also reach the warehouse. According to the worker, the bill for security gaps previously reported to management was charged to particular people.
- No termination process was opened against the subcontracted workers in the same team; only the staff workers' contracts were terminated.
- The process was taken to a disciplinary board, and the workers were asked for a defence. About a week after the defences the workers were dismissed, reported to the SGK under "Code 26." Code 26 means "termination by decision of a disciplinary board." The worker's words: "In the disciplinary board that is spoken of there is absolutely no process that would require this. We never did anything that would deserve this; we were dismissed unfairly."
- The dismissals were not confined to three workers: according to the worker a manager and a director in computing infrastructure systems were dismissed as well.
The conclusion the worker drew from this whole picture is plain: "This disciplinary process was used entirely as a pretext; they got a chance of this kind to dissolve the team inside and increase subcontracting. They assessed it this way and seized our rights."
Young comrades, read this list carefully, because a small but highly instructive logic of working life is hidden in it.
First, the person who finds the problem is declared guilty. The worker who detected the inventory gap and reported it is made responsible for the gap. This is not an accident: the person who says something has gone wrong at work becomes the visible face of that wrong. Punishing the person who reports, instead of examining management's own failure of oversight (cameras, access rights, security gaps), is both cheaper and an effective lesson that no one should report anything in future.
Second, responsibility is detached from the job description. The worker is held responsible for the results of an area over which they had no authority. Authority is above, responsibility below. This is hierarchy's oldest trick.
Third, the sanction is distributed according to the type of contract. Among people in the same team, with access to the same warehouse: termination for the staff worker, immunity for the subcontractor. If the matter were really missing devices, responsibility would be investigated person by person and concretely. That is also the question the worker said would be asked in court: the concreteness of the grounds for termination, the areas of duty and authority, whether a link was established between the inventory loss and personal fault, and why different sanctions were applied to employees in the same process.
Put the three points together: a team including managers is removed, a subcontractor is wanted in its place, the subcontracted employees are left untouched. It is hard to call this a disciplinary incident. The disciplinary process here looks like the legal wrapping of a restructuring decision.
Why "heavy accusations"? A lesson in law
Young comrades, we need to pause here. Because the phrase "dismissal under heavy accusations" names one of the techniques most used and least discussed in working life in Turkey.
In Turkey an employer can dismiss a worker in two main ways:
Termination for a valid reason (Labour Law no. 4857, arts. 17–18). The employer observes the notice period or pays it, and pays severance. In a workplace with thirty or more workers, for a worker with six months' seniority on an open-ended contract, the job-security provisions apply; the employer must prove the valid reason for the termination.
Immediate termination for just cause (art. 25/II, "acts contrary to morals and good faith"). Here the employer pays neither notice pay nor severance. Claims of breach of trust, conduct contrary to honesty and loyalty, disclosure of secrets and the like fall under this article.
Now put these two paths side by side like a cost table. The severance of a software worker who has worked for years is, at today's wages, serious money. Article 25/II brings that line down to zero. All that is required is an "accusation."
The phrase the union used on 15 September points exactly at this: "purely so that their entitlements would not be paid, by slander." There is as yet no court judgement here; the case is continuing, and this is the claim of the union and the workers. But the mechanism the claim describes is one met every day in labour cases: inventing a ground so as not to pay compensation.
What does the worker do? The law shows the way: within one month of the notice of termination they apply to a mediator; if no agreement comes out of that they file a reinstatement case in the labour court. The DeFacto Technology workers followed this path: mediation came to nothing, the case is being heard in the labour court. If the court finds the termination invalid the worker is reinstated; if the employer does not start them, it pays four to eight months' compensation for failure to reinstate and at most four months' pay for the time spent idle.
On paper, clear. But remember the second half of the union's sentence: "counting those who do not claim their rights as profit, and setting out to grind down those who sue for years."
This sentence tells the real working of bourgeois law in a single line. The right exists; but using the right has a cost. A lawyer, a case that lasts years, the need to find another job through those years, the name in the sector of someone known to be "in litigation." The company knows this cost and does its sums accordingly: some of those it dismisses will not sue; some of those who sue will tire and give up; and what will be paid to those who go all the way is often less than the compensation that would have been paid at the start.
In Sandalyeyi Kim Kaldırdı? on this blog, where we discussed leaving a single worker at the supermarket till, we said of Walmart's chair case: if the breach is cheaper than the penalty, the law turns into a price list. In the DeFacto dossier we see the same logic, this time inside a plaza.
That is why the union's demand is not "file a case, take your rights," but "immediate reinstatement." Because an individual case leaves the worker alone against the company for years. An organised demand loads that cost back onto the company: what is now being talked about is not four people's separate legal struggles, but a company answering in public.
Subcontracting: the posts went, the chairs stayed with the subcontractor
One of the most important sentences in the statement is the shortest: "the vacant posts were filled with subcontracted workers."
Read that sentence carefully. The workers left but the work did not end. That work is still being done; only now it is done by people who sit not on DeFacto's own payroll but on the payroll of a subcontractor or an "outsourcing" firm.
If the problem were really those workers' "fault," staff people would have been taken in their place. Since they were not, the real decision inside the dossier is a model decision: subcontracted computing worker instead of staff computing worker. That a manager and a director were among those dismissed, according to the worker's account, suggests that this is not about individuals one by one but about the dissolution of an entire internal team.
Why?
A subcontracted worker doing the same job is cheaper: their wage is usually lower, their side benefits fewer, their seniority is often reset.
A subcontracted worker is easier to discard: the company has no employment contract with them, it has a service-purchase contract. When the contract ends or "resource need" changes, it is not a worker that disappears but a line on an invoice.
A subcontracted worker is a worker harder to organise: two people sitting in the same office, at the same code, are tied to different employers, different contracts, different workplaces. They cannot sit at the same table and ask for the same right.
Let us add a small note on the law. Article 2 of the Labour Law says work may be given to a subcontractor only for a part of the main work, "in work that requires expertise for reasons of the enterprise and of technology"; in the law's own logic, splitting the main work to a subcontractor is an exception. Who today can claim that the software that keeps e-commerce, stock, logistics, payment and customer data standing in a retail company is "ancillary work"? The legal answer to that question is given by the courts. But we already know the political answer: computing is no longer at the edge of retail; it is at its heart. Giving the heart to a subcontractor is a redistribution not of cost but of power.
In Marx's language: subcontracting is a method of dispersing the collective worker by splitting labour-power into pieces that do the same job under different contracts. People who produce the same product together are legally alienated from one another. Capital draws on collective labour; but it does not allow that collective to recognise itself as a collective.
That is why the union's phrase "subcontracting order" is apt. The issue is not that others sat in the places of those dismissed; it is that those chairs are no longer anyone's secure chair.
This is not the first: DeFacto's autumn of 2025
To understand the DeFacto dossier we have to go back a year.
In September 2025, as soon as the schools opened, DeFacto dismissed about 450 employees at headquarters and in the warehouses. According to BirGün's report the company cited "downsizing"; a few months earlier more than two hundred workers had been dismissed from the shops. The sentence of an accounts worker of nine and a half years made the news: "The schools opened, the expenses were made... we were set aside like empty tins."
The details sendika.org reported are still more instructive:
- In June 2025 the company had changed the remote-work arrangement, imposed three office days a week, and in early September announced it would raise this to five.
- Workers said they learned they had been dismissed "from a phone call one evening."
- On the day of the dismissals, gathering in groups of more than three in the headquarters garden was banned, extra outside security was assigned, workers were not allowed up to the office floors, and they were not allowed to say goodbye to their comrades.
- In those days workers were coming together over WhatsApp groups and preparing a collective reinstatement case; there was no union.
Read this list and ask yourselves: Why does a company fear the people it has dismissed gathering in groups of more than three in the garden?
The answer is simple: Because three people are a meeting, a meeting is an organisation, an organisation is bargaining power. The capitalist class knows this better than the working class. The security guard in the garden was saying something the worker had not yet said to themselves: If you come together you are dangerous.
In 2025 there was no union behind those 450 people. In 2026 there is a union behind four people. The historical meaning of what happened in Halkalı this evening is exactly that difference.
The same week, the same class: from the shop to the plaza
The DeFacto dossier should not be read alone. The call to action was first announced in a major newspaper on 22 September, in Elif Özge Yalçın's report in Cumhuriyet. The main subject of the same report, though, was the chain stores. On one side the Independent Shop Workers' Union, speaking for BİM and Bizim Toptan workers; on the other the Computing Workers' Union, speaking for DeFacto Technology workers. On one newspaper page, the shelf and the server room side by side.
According to the report, this is what the shop workers told:
- At BİM three people are given six people's workload, breaks cannot be taken, workers collapse during the shift.
- Workers are told "if you raise your voice you will be thrown out, there are a thousand people to work, what will happen if you go to court" (as relayed by the union's education secretary Feyza Kayaaltı).
- "Code 46" is used in dismissals found to be unfair.
- At Bizim Toptan overtime pay is wiped, leave entitlements are deferred, shift and branch changes are used as a means of pressure, workers are forced to sell products past their use-by date.
- The journalist who wrote the report also wrote that breaks were arbitrarily shortened, use of the office was banned, and the worker ate their meal in the cold store.
- In the same period BİM announced 14.9 billion lira profit in the first six months of 2026.
- A week earlier A101 workers had also taken action for water, an adequate meal allowance and the right to sit.
Now let us set the two dossiers side by side:
| Shop till and warehouse | DeFacto Technology |
|---|---|
| Dismissal under "Code 46" | Dismissal under "Code 26" |
| "What will happen if you go to court" | "Grind down those who sue for years" |
| "There are a thousand people to work" | A subcontractor in the staff worker's place |
| Six people's work for three people | The team dissolved, the work shifted to an outside firm |
| Breaks shortened, no right to sit | Hours changed so they will not join the statement |
| 14.9 billion lira in six months' profit | 77 percent growth in the sector |
| Independent Shop Workers' Union | Computing Workers' Union |
Look again at the first row of the table. The SGK exit codes are, on paper, only statistical records. Code 46 indicates termination for acts contrary to morals and good faith; Code 26 indicates termination by decision of a disciplinary board. But these codes determine the worker's later life: they make the right to compensation disputable, they can make an application for unemployment benefit harder, they stamp "problem employee" on the record the next employer will see. The cashier in the shop and the systems administrator in the plaza are put through the same operation under different codes: the cost of dismissal is taken from the employer and loaded onto the worker.
That is why the phrase in the union's statement about "this enormous wheel that began in textiles and now reaches other sectors" should not be read for DeFacto alone. The wheel is one; the shop, the warehouse, the supermarket and the plaza are different cogs of that wheel. The idea that the computing worker is privileged, and that the shop worker lives "in another world," collapsed on this week's newspaper page.
The sentence Independent Shop Workers' Union general secretary Şevval Sarı dropped into the same report holds for computing workers too: "Do not carry what you live through alone. Find one another, form your committees."
"What's new this week?": a growing sector, a shrinking share
The heading the union gave its 15 September post is ironic: "What's new this week?" Anyone who knows plaza life recognises the question; it is the question of weekly meetings, bulletin e-mails, "update" presentations. The union gives its own answer: What is new this week is that our comrades have been put out on the pavement.
So are these dismissals the result of a sector crisis? The figures say the opposite.
According to the post BilişimSEN compiled from TÜBİSAD figures on 20 September:
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| 2025 growth of Turkey's information and communications technology sector | 77 percent |
| Size of the sector in 2025 | 2.1 trillion lira |
| Growth of the software segment alone | 124 percent |
| Increase in the sector's exports over the last five years | two and a half times |
| Unionisation rate in Turkey as a whole (July 2026) | 13.79 percent |
| Unionisation rate among computing workers | near zero |
The union's question is plain: "What fell to the share of us, the owners of the labour that made the sector grow? Dismissals, subcontracting, six-month, one-year contracts..."
Let us read this table with a Marxist eye. The sector is growing; that is, the value produced by computing workers is increasing. But in the same period these workers' security is shrinking: short-term contracts, subcontracting, dismissals under the name of "downsizing." This is not a contradiction; it is the ordinary form of capitalist growth. As the value produced increases, capital looks for ways to keep a larger part of that value for itself. Cheapening labour-power and making it insecure is the oldest of those ways.
And there is a single condition that makes this operation possible: lack of organisation. In a sector where the unionisation rate is "near zero," a single side at the table decides how growth will be shared.
Why did the computing worker not count themselves a worker?
Young comrades, we need to talk about this question openly. Because what leads us to see the DeFacto dossier as "a few people's dismissal" is a story that has been told to the computing worker for years.
The story goes like this: You work with knowledge. Your wage is several times the minimum wage. You can work remotely, you have flexible hours, coffee in the office is free. Your bargaining power is your individual talent. If you are good no one can touch you; if they do, another offer is waiting at the door. The union is a crutch that the "unskilled" worker needs.
For a period this story had a material basis: the shortage of software workers was large, companies poached people from one another, wages were rising fast. But two things changed.
First, the labour market changed. Even as the sector grew, the pace of hiring slowed; news of "downsizing" and "restructuring" came one after another. The offer waiting at the door is no longer waiting for everyone.
Second, labour itself is changing. As we have discussed more than once on this blog, artificial-intelligence tools are making part of software production standardised, measurable and substitutable. We called this mental Taylorism: just as Taylor in the factory took the craft worker's knowledge and turned it into management's rule-book, today the computing worker's knowledge is being transferred into tools, templates, "best practice" documents. As knowledge is separated from the worker, the worker becomes replaceable. And it becomes easier to take the replaceable worker from a subcontractor.
The result: the material basis of the "I am not a worker, I am talent" story is wearing away. What remains is only its ideology. And this ideology, at the very moment it is most needed, leaves the computing worker alone.
The four people at DeFacto lived the end of this story: they gave years of labour to the same company, they were dismissed "under heavy accusations," subcontractors came in their place. Their individual talent did not protect them. The only thing protecting them now is the organisation standing behind them.
The boss's calculation, the union's answer
Let us read what happened side by side in two different logics:
| The company's calculation | The union's answer |
|---|---|
| We dismiss four people; we write the ground | If the ground is slander, honour will be restored too |
| We fill the posts with subcontractors; costs fall | Subcontracting is an order that cheapens and splits labour |
| If someone does not claim their rights, that is profit | Rights will be claimed not by individuals but by the organisation |
| If someone sues they will struggle for years and tire | The struggle is not limited to the court; it is in front of the public |
| We refuse the request for a meeting; the matter closes | The matter did not close; "this is only the beginning" |
| What happens inside the plaza stays inside the plaza | The headquarters door is in front of the press |
| We fill the pavement with vehicles; the statement cannot be made | The statement is read in front of the vehicles |
| The sector is growing; the profit is ours | Workers will not pay the price of growth |
There is no need to memorise this table, but the logic must be grasped: the company's power comes from being able to keep what happens as an individual matter behind closed doors. The union's power comes from making the matter collective and public. The function of this evening's action was exactly that.
Why a small action is a large event
Some of your friends will say this: "A press statement for four people, a few dozen people, a few Instagram posts. What does this change?"
Our answer is in four points.
First, it sets a precedent. Dismissals in computing have been done in silence for years: a meeting invitation, an HR interview, accounts closed, a box of personal things. No one says anything, because there is nowhere to say it. The banner unfurled in front of DeFacto left this message on the table of every HR unit in the sector: From now on there is no guarantee of a silent dismissal.
Second, it shows the worker an address. The 450 people dismissed in 2025 tried to find one another in WhatsApp groups. In 2026 a computing worker knows there is a door they can go to when something happens to them. The last sentence of BilişimSEN's 15 September post was exactly that: "If you too are at DeFacto Technology and you say 'This cannot go on like this!', reach us."
Third, it carries solidarity beyond the borders of the sector. This evening there were not only computing workers on the pavement. According to Evrensel, Sosyal-İş, Dev Yapı-İş, TümİSG-SEN, Özel Basın-İş and Güvenlik-Sen supported the action. Five unions organised in different sectors coming to Halkalı for four computing workers says this to the computing worker: You are not alone, but in order not to remain alone you too must stand at other people's door.
Fourth, it is the first step of class consciousness. A software worker standing in front of a retail giant's headquarters, in front of the same door warehouse and shop workers passed through a year earlier, is the computing worker beginning to recognise themselves as part of the class. The phrase in the statement about "this enormous wheel that began in textiles and now reaches other sectors" says this too: under the same wheel stand the sales adviser in the shop, the forklift operator in the warehouse, and the software worker at headquarters.
Remember Marx's distinction between a class in itself and a class for itself. Computing workers have objectively been workers for a long time: they live by selling their labour-power, they do not own what they produce, they can be dismissed. But they did not see themselves that way. Standing together behind a union banner against an injustice is the most concrete, the most modest, and the most real step from a class in itself to a class for itself.
Concrete tasks
Dear Young Comrades, this piece is not only to inform. The following can be done from today.
For solidarity
- Publish the news. This action will not find space in the mainstream media. Share the union's action video and statement text; use the hashtag #DefactoDaNelerOluyor that the union used.
- Follow the next action. The union has said the struggle will continue until reinstatement. Be there at the next call; a crowd is the language company management understands best.
- Talk about the case in your own circle. In your school club, at your team's coffee break, in your community channels. The sentence "four software workers at DeFacto were replaced with subcontractors" is enough for many computing workers to look at their own workplace.
For those working in computing
- Read your contract and keep a copy. Open-ended or fixed-term? Directly with the company, or through an intermediary firm? You cannot defend your rights without knowing your own legal position.
- Keep your own work record. A personal record of the work you did, the tasks you were given, the performance feedback you received, will one day be your most valuable document if you meet a "heavy accusation."
- Check your exit code. When you are dismissed, look on e-Devlet at which code you were reported to the SGK under. "Faulty termination" codes such as Code 26 and Code 46 can affect your rights to compensation and unemployment benefit directly; that code is also a subject of dispute in objection and litigation.
- When you report a problem, report it in writing and collectively. At DeFacto Technology those who reported the inventory gap were made responsible for the gap. Report a security gap or a shortage you detect not alone and orally, but in writing and if possible together with your team; keep a copy of the report.
- Do not forget the time-limits in case of termination. The period for applying to a mediator for reinstatement is one month from the notice of termination. When that period is missed the right is missed too. And do not take this path alone: take it with a union, or at least with a labour lawyer.
- Learn your branch of activity and take out membership. Most computing workers are registered in branch number ten (Trade, Office, Education and Fine Arts); you can see your workplace's branch on e-Devlet and take out union membership there. Membership made through e-Devlet is not separately notified to the employer; moreover dismissal for union reasons is forbidden (Law no. 6356, art. 25); if it is breached the worker is entitled to union compensation of at least one year's wages.
- Do not treat your subcontracted comrade as a stranger. The outsourced worker at the desk beside you is not your rival; they are the other face of the same problem. Their insecurity is the limit of your security.
For students and those newly entering the sector
- Do not surrender to the "talent" story in your first job. Your talent finds you a job; what keeps you in the job is, most of the time, not your talent but your legal protection and the organisation behind you.
- Ask the type of contract in internships and first-job offers. Learn what legal relation stands behind phrases such as "project-based," "consultancy," "outsourcing."
- Discuss this dossier at your school. The questions we asked the computing workers of the new world can be a starting point for that discussion.
Dear Young Comrades,
This evening a banner was unfurled in Halkalı for four people. Four people may look like a small number beside Turkey's millions of workers.
But numbers sometimes mislead. A year ago gathering three people in the same company's garden was banned. This evening at the same company's door, behind a union banner, there were far more than three. And this time they had come not to say goodbye but to return. The company filled the pavement with shuttle vehicles; the text was read all the same.
Capital defined the computing worker for years as an exception: neither quite a worker nor quite a boss, a "talent." The DeFacto dossier showed that this exception is over. The software worker too can be dismissed, a subcontractor can be put in the software worker's place too, slander can be thrown at the software worker too.
But the same dossier showed something else: the software worker can organise too. The software worker can unfurl a banner in front of headquarters too. The software worker can say "our demand is open, non-negotiable and clear" too.
Read the last sentence of the statement once more: "We will not give up our struggle until the four computing workers are reinstated."
What will decide whether that sentence comes true is not the good will of DeFacto's management. It is how many people will stand on that pavement.
With the wish to see you too on that pavement next time.
The DeFacto worker who resists will win.
Comradely.
Knowledge belongs to everyone.
Sources
The action and union statements
- Video of the action in front of DeFacto headquarters — BilişimSEN Instagram, 23 September 2026
- The press statement we made in front of Defacto headquarters — BilişimSEN Instagram, 23 September 2026
- Defacto Technology tried to physically obstruct our press statement — BilişimSEN X account, 23 September 2026
- Altur Turizm — Staff Shuttle Transport
- BilişimSEN X account — thanks to the unions that supported the action and sharing of the Evrensel report, 23 September 2026
- DeFacto, End the Unlawfulness! — call to action, BilişimSEN Instagram, 21 September 2026
- What's New This Week at DeFacto Technology? — BilişimSEN Instagram, 15 September 2026
- The Sector Is Growing, So Where Are We? (TÜBİSAD figures) — BilişimSEN Instagram, 20 September 2026
- BilişimSEN — Computing Workers' Union official site
- BİLİŞİM-SEN Press Statement (founding), 1 August 2025
The action and the dossier in the press
- Struggle for 4 workers at DeFacto: 'We want our jobs back, workers will not pay the price of growth' — Barış Salık, Evrensel, 23 September 2026
- Workers at chain stores such as A-101 and BİM rebelled against working conditions: 'The workload is heavy, the threats many' — Elif Özge Yalçın, Cumhuriyet, 22 September 2026
- Elif Özge Yalçın's post on the report — X, 22 September 2026
DeFacto's 2025 dismissals
- Worker massacre at DeFacto: 450 people dismissed — BirGün, 3 September 2025
- Worker massacre at DeFacto: 450 workers dismissed; they were not even allowed to say goodbye, for fear of "organising" — sendika.org, September 2025
Legislation
- Exit code no. 26 changed to "Termination by Decision of a Disciplinary Board" — TÜRMOB circular
- The employer giving exit under Code 46 — FFK Partner Hukuk, 2026
- Labour Law no. 4857 (art. 2 subcontractor, arts. 17–21 job security, art. 25 just-cause termination) — Official Gazette legislation system
- Law no. 6356 on Trade Unions and Collective Labour Agreements (art. 25 union protection) — Official Gazette legislation system
Related pieces on this blog
- The Computing Worker's Handbook
- Questions for the Computing Workers of the New World
- From Plazas to Technoparks, a Digital Union: A Class Barricade Against Algorithmic Exploitation
- Bilişim-Sen Founding Congress Call: The Human of the Future Takes Ownership of Their Future
- Dual Power in IT: A Guide to Cooperation Between the Union and the Professional Chamber
- Gig Economy Dossier
- TÜİK: Two Figures, One Country: 8.1% and 30.6%
- Sandalyeyi Kim Kaldırdı?
- All posts tagged #bilisimsen
