What Is This Thing Called Racism?
In Zonguldak the Kurdish Worker Who Was Stoned and the Villager Who Threw the Stone Work for the Same Daily Wage
Comrade, Who Divided Us?
On 23–24 August 2026 in Alaplı district of Zonguldak, more than seventy seasonal agricultural workers who had come from Şırnak for the hazelnut harvest — including women and children — were attacked twice by groups with stones and clubs. In the same days in Düzce, knives were drawn on workers from Mardin. Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said “do not generalise an isolated incident.” After that statement the second attack came. The four people detained were released after giving statements.
Comrade, this piece is long. But read it to the end, because what it tells will confront you for the rest of your life.
I will ask you something. Who is the man who threw that stone in Zonguldak?
Probably not rich. Probably he himself works in that hazelnut grove, or cannot make a profit from his own. Probably he has rent, debt, a grocery bill. That is: the person opposite him, the person he stoned, is of the same class.
So how did one come to throw a stone at the other?
This piece is looking for the answer to that.
First lesson: What is racism?
First let us clear away the most common mistake.
There is no such biological thing as race. There is a social relation called racism.
This is not a slogan; it is a measured fact. The calculation geneticist Richard Lewontin made in 1972, confirmed again and again for fifty years, is this: 85.4% of human genetic diversity is among individuals within the same population. The share explained by the classical “race” classification is only 6.3%.
What does that mean, comrade? It means this: the genetic difference between two randomly chosen Kurds is greater than the difference between an average Kurd and an average Turk. The category called “race” describes not a biological reality but a habit of classification.
So what is racism?
Racism is a system of thought and practice produced not to explain the difference between people, but to legitimise the inequality between them.
Look at its history and you will see the order: first came exploitation, then race was invented. The Atlantic slave trade and colonialism were established first; the theory of “white racial superiority” was written afterwards to justify that order. Racism is not the cause of exploitation; it is its cover.
And it works on three levels:
1. Interpersonal: Insult, exclusion, beating. The visible part.
2. Institutional: The invisible and decisive part. Look: on 28 July 2026 in Kastamonu, Furkan Oğlak, attacked on a bus for listening to Kurdish music, was detained by the police and remanded on a charge of “organisational propaganda.” In July 2026 in Istanbul’s Sarıyer, after a group of about seventy people beat a Kurdish shopkeeper for 30–35 minutes and broke both his arms, the police first detained the victims.
3. Ideological: That the sentence “they are like that anyway” can circulate in society. The state’s language is decisive here. In the Dedeoğulları case in Konya in 2021, in which seven people were murdered, the prosecution counted the motive as “simple enmity”; racism was not recognised in law. In 2026 the ministry says “isolated.”
Comrade, carve this into your mind: the perpetrator’s courage comes from the state’s language. When motive is not recognised, the crime is personalised; a personalised crime is repeated.
Second lesson: Why now? Why here?
Racism does not erupt at the same intensity at all times. Under certain conditions it flares; under certain conditions it fades. Know those conditions.
First condition: crisis.
According to DİSK-AR’s December 2025 study, 46.7% of private-sector employees earn the minimum wage or less; among women workers the rate is 60.1%. About 40% of informal workers earn half the minimum wage or less.
This picture produces anger. The anger is real, legitimate, justified.
But the address of anger is not spontaneously correct. An address is pointed out. And the one who points is whoever owns the media, the podium, the algorithm.
Second condition: political conjuncture.
On 10–11 August 2026 the “Terror-Free Turkey” framework law passed the Assembly with 467 votes. The attacks erupted twelve days later. That link is being openly discussed in Turkey today.
See the structural contradiction, comrade: the process advances on a military-legal plane — laying down arms, deferred sentences, release. But on the social plane there is no counterpart: still no hate-crime legislation, no mother-tongue right in law, no equal citizenship. So the Kurdish labourer does not benefit from the legal gifts of “peace”; he pays the physical price of the nationalist tension the process creates — in the hazelnut grove.
Third condition: impunity.
In the Dedeoğulları massacre the gunman received seven aggravated life sentences; all the other defendants were acquitted. Moreover, about sixty people had attacked that family two months earlier, on 12 May 2021; the family had asked for protection and had not received it.
In Zonguldak the four people detained were released after statements.
A method left unpunished is a method repeated.
Third lesson: Being Kurdish in the west — the numbers
Let us speak data, not feeling.
Press survey by the Centre for Socio-Political Field Research (13 March 2015 – 1 August 2021): 45 physical attacks on Kurds, at least 16 dead, about 100 people affected. Geographic concentration: Istanbul, Konya, Antalya, Ankara, Sakarya — that is, western provinces.
In the same centre’s survey, 94.9% of participants have Kurdish as their mother tongue, but only 37.6% can use that language in daily life.
Look at the chronology, comrade — and see the repetition:
| Date | Place | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 19 July 2021 | Afyon | Attack on seasonal workers for speaking Kurdish: 7 injured |
| 21 July 2021 | Konya | Armed group of ~60; Hakim Dal killed |
| 30 July 2021 | Konya | Dedeoğulları massacre: 7 killed, house burned |
| 7–8 August 2025 | Hatay/Samandağ | Mass attack on Kurdish construction workers after social-media targeting |
| 10 August 2025 | Mersin | Attack on a family returning from a picnic: “This is the Republic of Turkey; you cannot speak Kurdish” |
| 21 July 2026 | Istanbul/Sarıyer | Group of ~70; Kurdish shopkeeper’s both arms broken; police first detained the victims |
| 28 July 2026 | Kastamonu | Person listening to Kurdish music was attacked — and he was the one arrested |
| 23–24 August 2026 | Zonguldak / Düzce | Two attacks on 70+ hazelnut workers; knife threats |
And now the most important datum.
According to Rawest Research, about one third of the Kurdish population lives in western provinces and has no intention of returning.
Comrade, do not miss what that sentence means: The Kurd in the west is not a “guest.” He is the neighbour born there, raised there, working there, buried there. The sentence “go back to your homeland” is not an empty insult — it is an attempt to strip an existing citizen of citizenship.
And this: in the Field Centre’s regional surveys the first problem is the economy and unemployment (68.9% in May 2025). So what sends the person from Şırnak to Zonguldak to pick hazelnuts is not culture but unemployment. What produces migration is the economy; what greets migration is the stone.
Fourth lesson: Migrants — first the numbers
Now to the migrant question. And let us begin with figures, because in this debate the lie is easiest to catch here.
Number of Syrians under temporary protection, according to Migration Authority data:
| Year | Number |
|---|---|
| 2021 (peak) | 3,737,369 |
| 2023 | 3,214,780 |
| 2024 | 2,901,478 |
| End of 2025 | 2,347,756 |
| June 2026 | 2,255,031 |
A 38.5% drop from the peak. After Assad’s fall (December 2024), the Interior Ministry’s announced return figure is 667,565 (May 2026).
The total number of foreigners in Turkey — residence permit holders, international protection, everyone included — is roughly 4 million.
Now compare: the most visible name of anti-migrant politics, Ümit Özdağ, says “13 million asylum seekers and illegals.”
Comrade, a politics that speaks at three times the truth is not a mistake. It is a method. Because fear cannot be produced with the correct figure.
And the balance sheet of violence:
Kayseri, 30 June – 2 July 2024: After an abuse allegation spread on social media (it later emerged that the victim child was a relative of the perpetrator), more than fifty workplaces were wrecked; the events spread to at least nine provinces; 474 detentions. In Antalya the fifteen-year-old Syrian Ahmed al-Naif was stabbed to death. The İHD report found three things: security forces did not intervene adequately in the first two days; attackers organised over social media; even damage assessment for the victims was not done.
Turkey Lynching Map (independent archive published June 2026): 1,681 lynching cases between 1935 and 2023; 50 of them anti-migrant. And read this finding carefully: in half the cases the police did not intervene; in 21 cases the police were themselves in the position of perpetrator.
Fifth lesson: The real issue — the industrial reserve army
Now we have reached the heart of the piece, comrade. What follows explains everything.
In Volume I of Capital Marx shows this: capitalism does not produce unemployment as an accident — it produces it as a need. Capital accumulation continually creates its own “relative surplus population.” This is called the industrial reserve army.
What is this army for? Two things:
- It supplies ready labour at the moment of expansion.
- And most importantly: it presses down the wages of those in work. If a mass of unemployed waits at the gate, the worker inside cannot ask for a rise, cannot think of a strike, cannot object. The reserve army is the boss’s invisible stick.
Now pay attention, because the real subtlety is here:
The migrant or Kurdish worker is the cheapest section of this army. But the reason they are cheap is not that they are Syrian, Kurdish or Afghan. The reason they are cheap is that they are RIGHTLESS.
Watch how this works:
- Work permits issued to Syrians in 2025: 105,096. Working-age (18–64) Syrian population: about 1.37 million. So roughly 92% of employable Syrians are outside registered employment.
- According to the ILO’s field research, informality among employed Syrians is 91.6%; 76.8% earn below the hourly minimum wage; they work an average of 52.3 hours a week; 34.7% work 60 hours a week or more. Workers from Turkey earn on average 63.1% more.
Put these figures side by side and think.
A worker without insurance cannot fall ill. A worker without registration cannot complain. A worker who can be deported cannot go on strike. A worker who cannot join a union cannot bargain.
That is where cheapness comes from. Not from ethnicity, but from statuslessness.
And now look at the regulation of 26 June 2026: the work-permit requirement for those under temporary protection was lifted and replaced by an “exemption document”; the employer’s annual fee of 13,538 TL and the condition of employing at least five Turkish citizens at the workplace were abolished.
Comrade, ask: whose work did this regulation make easier?
It did not increase the worker’s security. It lowered the employer’s cost.
Sixth lesson: So is “they’re taking our jobs” true?
I will be honest here, because propaganda is not our job. Let us take this question seriously, look at the literature — and say the uncomfortable part as well.
Empirical studies on Turkey fall into two groups:
Those finding a negative effect:
- Del Carpio & Wagner (World Bank, 2015): A 1-point rise in the refugee ratio reduces native employment by ~1.1–1.4 points. But look at the breakdown: informal jobs −5.0 points, formal jobs +1.2–1.5 points. Agricultural workers −4.4. Women −2.8; men almost zero.
- Ceritoğlu, Gürcihan Yüncüler, Torun & Tümen (2017): Informal employment fell ~2.2 points. Of informal jobs lost, 50% left the labour force entirely; only 18% could move into formal work. On wages, NO statistically significant effect.
- Aksu, Erzan & Kırdar (2022): Strong negative effect in the informal sector; positive effect in the formal sector.
Those finding no negative effect:
- Cengiz & Tekgüç (2022): Native workers — including the low-educated — did not face negative employment or wage effects; on the contrary, some moved from informal to formal. Reason: migration also created a demand shock (new housing permits +34%, new business formation +24%).
- Gülek (2026): There is an effect but small; and the main finding is this — had refugees been given work permits, about 120,000 additional formal jobs would have formed in the economy.
Now let us combine these findings, comrade, because they do not contradict:
Migrant labour does not generally lower wages. But in the informal sphere it pushes the native poor out of the market. The losers are systematically the same: women, young people, the low-educated, agricultural and construction workers.
So the competition felt by the man who says “they took my job” is real. It is not invented; it cannot be belittled.
But he misses two things:
First: The place where that competition is lived is the informal sector. That is, the already uninsured, insecure, uninspected sphere. What creates the competition is not the migrant’s presence but that sphere’s being lawless.
Second — and pay attention to this: About 60% of findings that “average wages rose” is a composition effect. That is, wages did not rise; the average rose because the lowest-paid were erased from the count. Even the statistic makes the loser invisible.
Conclusion, comrade: If you drive the migrant out, informality does not go. Only the colour of informality changes — and you will see how in the Nepal example shortly.
Seventh lesson: Antep, Adana, Kocaeli — three cities, one mechanism
Let us leave theory and go into the field.
ANTEP — textiles and shoes
As of July 2026, 315,029 Syrians live in Gaziantep: 12.42% of the city’s population, about one in eight people.
The city’s industry: Turkey’s largest organised industrial zone by area, 1,250 firms, about 300,000 employed. Textiles alone employ more than 78,000 workers — 56.75% of industrial employment.
The figure from the shoe-sector chamber of tradesmen’s president is striking: the sector had ~80,000 workers, of whom ~10,000 were Syrian and 7,500 were skilled workers at master–journeyman level. After Syrian returns, official records speak of a 14% labour-force loss in the city.
So how do these workers work? Field research on upper-shoe stitching found: six days a week, 13–15 hours a day, piece rates, the worker buying their own materials, no union, carcinogenic chemicals.
And the children. According to the İSİG Assembly, between 2013 and 2026 at least 862 child workers died while working in Turkey. In the provincial ranking Gaziantep is second with 49 deaths. Of the dead children, 100 were refugees/migrants.
But now I will give you Antep’s most important news, comrade — and this is the most hopeful sentence in the piece:
In September 2017 the upper-stitchers’ strikes spread to Adana, Istanbul, Antep and Izmir. Turkish and Syrian workers took part in that strike TOGETHER.
Keep that in mind. We will return to it at the end.
ADANA — field, middleman, tent
Çukurova is the heart of seasonal agricultural labour in Turkey. There are at least 3 million seasonal agricultural workers in the country; the main sending provinces are Şanlıurfa, Mardin, Adıyaman, Diyarbakır, Şırnak, Batman, Van, Ağrı.
Wage (14 February 2026, governorate commission decision): daily wage 1,385 TL for an 8-hour day, including 10% middleman commission. After the commission: ~1,250 TL in the worker’s hand.
And do not miss this detail: the wage was CUT from the previous period’s 1,500 TL to 1,385 TL. Agricultural workers’ associations in Mersin and Hatay refused to sign the protocol and went to court.
The middleman (elçi/dayıbaşı/çavuş) system: The same person binds the worker to the job, the road, the tent and the food. This is more than a cut from the wage; it is a relation of dependence.
And this, comrade, is a lesson on its own: The wage is paid to the male head of household. So the labour of the woman and child working in the field never appears as a wage. The informality rate is 80%.
According to Development Workshop research, of about 200,000 workers coming to Çukurova an estimated 80,000 are child workers. In field work in Adana and Şanlıurfa, 43% of active workers are under 18; only 26% of children of compulsory-school age attend school.
Note: some of these households are Syrian, some Turkish Kurds. Same field, same tent, same middleman’s commission.
KOCAELİ — industry and death
In 2025 at least 49 workers died in work murders in Kocaeli. 93% of the deaths occurred in non-union workplaces. Women workers’ deaths are twice the Turkey average.
And one name: Dilovası, Ravive Cosmetics, 8 November 2025.
Those who died in the fire: Cansu Esatoğlu (16), Nisa Taşdemir (17), Tuğba Taşdemir (18), Şengül Yılmaz (55), Esma Gikan, Hanım Gülek (65). All women. At least two children.
Conditions: of 20 employees only 4 insured. Daily wage 800 TL. The fire escape was “not built because it cost 300–500 thousand lira.” The only exit door was blocked with materials. The factory did subcontract production for big brands. In 2024 informal-work complaints were made twice; nothing was done.
Comrade, now read very carefully:
All six women who died at Ravive were citizens of this country.
The sentence “jobs for our own citizens first” dissolves against this fact. Because capital’s measure is not citizenship but cost. It cheapens whoever it can cheapen — the Syrian, the Kurd, and sixteen-year-old Cansu from Kocaeli alike.
And one more: the Nepal line
An investigation that surfaced in July 2026 shows how the “reserve army” is imported.
A middleman firm brings workers from Nepal to Turkey. The account is this: the employer pays the firm 12,000 TL + VAT per worker as a service fee. And the worker themselves pays the middleman 98,000–200,000 TL upfront; they pay off this debt in 1 to 8 years. Scale: about 4,500 Nepali workers to 120 firms. Conditions: 8 hours in the contract, 12–14 hours in practice; passports confiscated; housing in containers of 4–8 people. Some of these firms produce for international brands.
What do you call a worker who cannot leave without paying the debt, whose passport has been taken, comrade? This is not a question of definition but a historical testimony: this mechanism is debt bondage.
And the conclusion that follows is the hardest answer to anti-migrant politics:
The Syrians returned. What did capital do? It brought workers from Nepal.
Because what was sought was not a Syrian. What was sought was a RIGHTLESS worker.
Eighth lesson: The European mirror — and the exposure of hypocrisy
Now, comrade, it is time to look in the mirror.
How did they go?
30 October 1961: A labour-recruitment agreement was signed between the Federal Republic of Germany and Turkey.
So why did Germany call for workers? Out of mercy? Look at the figure: in 1960 Germany had about 650,000 open jobs against only 150,000 job-seekers. Moreover, the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 cut the flow of East German labour that until then had fed West German industry.
So Germany called for workers because its capital needed labour. Just as Antep’s textile workshops, Çukurova’s pepper fields and Dilovası’s subcontract factories need it today.
By 1973 about 870,000 workers from Turkey had gone.
And do you know what those people were called? "Gastarbeiter" — guest worker.
Dwell on that concept, comrade. Because it is the purest form of an ideological operation: the word “guest” constructs a labour category assumed not to be permanent — and therefore not requiring citizenship, housing, education or political representation.
Labour-power was summoned; the human being was counted as not having arrived.
And this detail is very instructive: the agreement initially foresaw “rotation” — when the worker’s term ended they would return and a new one would come. Firms quickly abandoned that model. Why? Not because they had a moral awakening: keeping a trained worker was cheaper than training a new one. What broke the idea of “guestness” was not conscience but cost calculation.
What happened afterwards?
| Date | Event | Dead |
|---|---|---|
| 22/23 November 1992 | Mölln — two Turkish families’ homes firebombed | 3 (one 10, one 14) |
| 29 May 1993 | Solingen — Genç family home firebombed | 5 (youngest 4) |
| 2000–2007 | NSU murders | 10 (8 of Turkish origin) |
| 19 February 2020 | Hanau | 9 |
Tell the NSU especially, comrade — because the real scandal is not in the murders but in the investigation.
German police named this murder series the "Döner murders." For years they treated the victims’ families as suspects; they sought drug and mafia links; far-right motive was almost never investigated. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution destroyed files. That is, the state could not solve a racist murder series because its own racism made it look in the wrong place.
The families were victimised twice: once for being murdered, once for being declared the killers.
Germany today
- Politically motivated crimes hit a record 85,837 in 2025. Of hate crimes, 19,484 were xenophobic/racist in motive.
- According to independent victim advice centres, in 2025 3,167 attacks, 4,298 victims — an average of 12 people a day. 55% racist in motive.
- In 2025 1,032 attacks on Muslims and mosques; 313 suspects identified, only 3 arrests.
- The AfD became the second party in the February 2025 federal election with 20.8%. In August 2026 polls it is first with 28%.
And discrimination measured
These are not surveys, comrade — field experiments. That is, the same CV, different name:
| Study | Finding |
|---|---|
| Kaas & Manger (2010) | A German name raises the chance of a callback by 14%. In small firms 24% |
| SVR (2014) | A candidate with a German name must make 5 applications; one with a Turkish name 7 |
| Weichselbaumer (2016) | Sandra Bauer 18.8% · Meryem Öztürk 13.5% · Meryem Öztürk with headscarf 4.2% |
| Bonefeld & Dickhäuser (2018) | The exact same dictation text: the student named “Murat” scored lower than “Max” |
| FRA (2024) | 68% of Muslims in Germany reported experiencing racist discrimination (EU avg. 47%) |
| IAB (2025) | First-generation migrants earn on average 19.6% less |
Note: in Germany’s 2025 average unemployment rate, German citizens 6.3%, foreign nationals 14.8% — about double.
And now the mirror
Comrade, now I will put two sentences side by side. Read slowly.
In January 2026, in Uelzen, Germany, thirty-year-old Ayoub F., on his way to the mosque, was stabbed to death by an AfD supporter. The prosecution said “had the defendant not held a xenophobic attitude, this act would not have occurred.” In August 2026 the court gave the perpetrator ten years but did not accept racist motive.
In August 2026 in Zonguldak more than seventy Kurdish workers were stoned. The Justice Minister said “isolated incident.”
In 2021 in Konya seven people were murdered. The prosecution counted the motive as “simple enmity.”
Do you see?
When Germany does racism to us we are right and they are hypocrites. When we do the same to the Kurdish worker it becomes “isolated.”
Same sentence. Two languages. One function: protecting the perpetrator.
And do not forget this: the same mental template that in Germany says “Turks don’t integrate, they speak their language, they form neighbourhoods” here says “Kurds speak a separate language, they come in crowds.” A consciousness that weeps for Solingen and says “isolated” for Zonguldak is not against racism; it is only against the victimisation of its own group.
That is not anti-racism. It is nationalism waiting its turn.
Ninth lesson: What does “being Turkish” mean? — and the comedy of DNA tests
Now we come to the entertaining part, comrade. But do not miss the lesson at the end, because that is the real issue.
Studies of the genetic structure of the Anatolian population give these estimates for “Central Asian contribution”:
| Study | Method | Estimated Central Asian contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Cinnioğlu et al. | Y-chromosome | ~3.4% |
| Berkman et al. | Autosomal | ~13% |
| Di Benedetto et al. | mtDNA | ~30% |
Stop a minute, comrade. A figure swinging between 3.4% and 30%.
What does that mean? It means the question itself is scientifically unstable. But there is something all the studies agree on: the Anatolian population is genetically closest to its Balkan and Middle Eastern neighbours; it stands in an intermediate position between Europe and Asia. Geographic proximity is a far stronger marker of genetic similarity than linguistic kinship.
And the finest finding of an academic study of this field is this: the questions asked are themselves the questions of the Republic’s “Turkish History Thesis.” That is, “how Central Asian are we?” is not science’s question but nationalist historiography’s; science is trying to answer it.
Now to the comedy of commercial DNA tests. You will find hundreds of examples online: the person who takes a test to prove they are a “pure Turk” gets Balkan, Caucasian, Levantine, Greek, Armenian, Italian percentages. Then that person either declares the test a “Western conspiracy” or takes it again with another company.
Laugh, comrade. But then stop and think this — perhaps the most important sentence in the piece:
Whatever the test result, nothing changes.
Because if you say “we are mixed too, so racism is nonsense,” you have unwittingly accepted the racist’s ground: as if had you come out pure, racism would have been logical.
No. The correct answer is this: Whether mixed or not is not a measure of rights. A person’s rights come not from a gene map but from being human. The genetic debate does not refute racism — it invalidates racism’s question.
So what is a nation?
In Benedict Anderson’s famous definition: an imagined community. But “imagined” does not mean fake; it means constructed. Nations are not natural; they are historical: they are built with the printing press, standard language, compulsory education, the army, the map, the national anthem and a shared narrative of “us.”
If you want an example, the nearest one: the 1923 population exchange. Muslims coming from Salonika were counted as “Turkish”; Orthodox leaving Kayseri were counted as “Greek.” The measure was not blood but religion. No one’s genes were examined; people were classified and their places changed.
Now think: if the same state can turn people into a “nation” with a ledger, can that nation be a natural fact?
Tenth lesson: The socialist view — not erasing identities, but abolishing hierarchy
Comrade, let us be very clear here, because this is where we are most often misunderstood.
We do not want identities erased.
Socialism is not a grey order in which everyone is the same type. On the contrary: it is an order in which identity can be lived without paying a price.
The right to mother tongue is not a “cultural ornament.” It is the worker being able to defend themselves in court, explain their trouble in hospital, and speak without shame at school. That is, directly a matter of equality.
In the Marxist tradition the roots of this are solid. Lenin puts the duty of the socialist of the oppressor nation thus: to fight one’s own nation’s nationalism; to defend the oppressed nation’s right to self-determination. Whoever does the reverse — that is, whoever winks at the oppressor nation’s nationalism — is not a socialist but a nationalist.
But the decisive proof comes from Marx. When you read the letter he wrote in 1870 on Irish and English workers, you will shudder, because it is as if written for Zonguldak:
“The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker… This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power.”
Comrade, see the mechanism in these lines written 156 years ago:
- The worker sees another worker as a competitor. (This feeling is real — we saw it in the literature just now.)
- The feeling of competition combines with the nationalist and religious prejudices ready to hand.
- And the resulting division becomes the guarantee of capital’s power.
Marx writes this not as an accusation but as a diagnosis. What is to be blamed is not the divided worker but whoever benefits from the division.
And one of Capital’s best-known sentences packs the matter into a single line:
“Labour in the white skin cannot emancipate itself where the black skin is branded.”
Translate that to today, comrade:
The Turkish worker cannot emancipate himself while the Kurdish worker is branded. The native worker cannot defend his own wage while the migrant worker is left rightless.
This is not a moral wish. It is an economic necessity. Because as long as a worker without rights works beside you, your wage too is pulled toward that level. Defending the exploited neighbour’s rights is not philanthropy — it is defending your own wage.
Watch out: three narrative traps
1. “They’re taking our jobs.” Half true: competition in the informal sphere is real. But the trap is here — what creates the competition is not the migrant’s presence but their rightlessness. The correct answer is not “drive them out” but “register them all, give them all the same wage and the same union.” If you drive them out, someone comes from Nepal; if you register them, the boss’s cheap-labour source dries up.
2. “They’re spoiling our demographics.” The figures say the opposite: from 3.74 million to 2.25 million. But the real trap is this: “demographic” anxiety is a view that counts the human being as a mass, not an individual. And in this country it is the state that has mainly played with demography — exchange, forced settlement, village clearances. Not the migrant on the street.
3. “Jobs for our own citizens first.” Ask the boss who utters this sentence only one question: what do you pay your own citizen? All six women who died in Dilovası were citizens of this country; four of twenty employees were insured; the fire escape was found too expensive. Citizenship provides no protection against being cheapened.
Against all three the tool in your hand is the same: In whose hands? Under whose control? For whose benefit?
So what is to be done?
Comrade, let us be honest: the following do not change the system. But today they weaken division — and when division weakens, bargaining power rises.
1. Work permits and equal wage guarantees for all migrant workers. Before it is a humanitarian demand, this is a wage defence. Recall: had work permits been given, about 120,000 additional formal jobs would have formed in the economy. Informality is the boss’s preference, not the migrant’s.
2. Hate-crime legislation. Racist motive must be recognised as an aggravating element. The labels “simple enmity” and “isolated” must end. Until motive is recognised the pattern is invisible; until the pattern is visible no measure is taken.
3. Abolish the middleman system; pay the wage directly to the worker. The 10% commission comes out of the worker’s pocket. And the wage must be paid not to the household head but to the worker — that is, to the woman as well, separately. Invisible labour is unpaid labour.
4. Decent housing and security for seasonal workers. Today’s circular constructs the worker not as a subject to be protected but as an object to be registered, patrolled, prevented from settling. The result was seen in Zonguldak: the police were there; the second attack happened anyway.
5. And the most critical — unions must enrol migrant workers. Of the 2,105 workers who died in work murders in 2025, 98% were non-union. The non-union worker both dies and pulls wages down. Keeping the migrant outside the union is handing the boss a free weapon.
And one directly for you, comrade:
It will confront you one day for sure: a conversation, a group message, a workplace break. Someone will start a sentence with “because of these people.”
At that moment do not fight. Ask a question. “So how much of a raise did your boss give this year?” “In whose pocket did your unpaid overtime stay?” “Who cut your daily wage in that field from 1,500 to 1,385?”
Because racism is not a debate; it is a misdirection of address. Correcting the address is more effective than winning the argument.
Last word
Young comrade, let us look back.
In Antep textiles do not turn without the Syrian master. In Çukurova peppers are not picked without the Kurdish worker from Şanlıurfa. In Dilovası subcontract production does not profit without the uninsured woman worker. Germany’s “economic miracle” was not possible without the 870,000 workers from Turkey called in 1961.
Every time the same mechanism: Capital summons labour. Then it leaves that labour rightless. Then it presents the rightless labour as a threat to the worker who has rights. And while the two go at each other, profit flows quietly upward.
The only difference between the man who threw the stone in Zonguldak and the worker who was stoned is that one arrived there earlier.
Both pick the same hazelnuts. Both have to accept the same daily wage. Both their children fail the same school. Both wait in the same hospital queue. Both have the same boss.
And as long as those two men stone each other, neither’s wage will rise.
There is no race; there is racism. The nation is not natural; it is constructed. Culture is not a hierarchy but a plurality.
But class is real. Class is measured by who owns what, by who lives off whose labour — and it is the only distinction that explains everything we have described.
That is why we end the piece with one of the truest sentences written on this country’s walls. Short, plain, indisputable:
"The cause of our poverty is not migrants but native thieves."
Memorise that, comrade. And when one day someone wants you to throw a stone, look not at the stone in your hand — look at who pointed to the stone.
In comradeship
