Turkey's trade unions gather to coordinate general strike in protest of state terror

[Crux]

Link (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-982272)

A little bit of background. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEapNRakzDI)

[Devrim]

Turkey's major trade unions, including The Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DISK), The Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK), and the Education and Science Workers' Union (Eğitim-Sen) are meeting early today after soaring call for general strike to give weight to anti-government protests across Turkey, which were sparked by a brutal police crackdown on a peaceful sit-in in Istanbul's Gezi Park on May 30, 2013.

This is a bit misleading. These are not the main trades unions. The biggest union is Türk-İş. These are the 'left' unions.


June 3, 2013 - 15:56 (GMT) Update: KESK has called for a nationwide strike to strongly condemn the state terror that has been systematically and vengefully unleashed upon Turkish citizens for exercising their democratic rights, which it considers a clear sign of the government's anti-democratic and fascistic attitudes. It has also openly criticised PM Erdoğan for his dismissal of millions of protesters as "a bunch of looters". About a quarter of a million union members are expected to join the strike on 4-5 June.

This too, as it makes it sound like this strike was called solely in response to events while actually a strike was already planned for this week anyway.

Devrim

[Leo]

From the other thread:
Calls for a general strike are intensifying: KESK, the leftist public workers union, has declared that it will merge its one-day warning strike with the demonstrations, and the KESK general strike will take place on the 4th and the 5th, bringing a total of 240,000 public workers on a strike. Meanwhile, DISK, the leftist private sector union which said it can mobilize up to 150,000 workers, has announced that it will be organizing warning demonstrations, with the slogan: "we will stop life if the government doesn't stop attacking demonstrations", reading leaflets in workplaces tomorrow and starting to take action on the 5th. KESK apparently called for a general strike for all unions on the 5th and the 6th, and I've read that DISK, TMMOB (engineers and archithects union) and the TTB (doctors union) are warm on the idea. Calls are made on Turk-Is, the mainstream public workers union, to join in as well although I don't think anyone aside from the opposition unions within Turk-Is (the Syndical Power Unity Platform) will even participate in the demonstrations.

My personal opinion: KESK's limited general strike won't have a large effect, unless the 240,000 striking remain on strike after the 5th or the 6th, quite possibly against the wishes of KESK leaders themselves. The demonstrators probably will urge them to do so, which they well might - and if they do, other workers there might follow.

Additional news: more police brutality in Ankara, the Rector's Office of the Aegean University in Izmir has been occupied, and the demonstrators in Taksim gave the names of the Kurdish victims of the massacre in Roboski (Uludere) and the Turkish and Arab victims of Reyhanli to the trees - a meaningful demonstration of internationalism.

[Crux]

Thanks for the updates, comrades.