ISTANBUL: Turkish police have detained hundreds of workers protesting over labor conditions at Istanbul’s new airport, a giant project championed by President Tayyip Erdogan and due to open next month, a union leader said on Saturday.
The protest broke out after a shuttle bus accident on Friday in which 17 workers were injured, said Ozgur Karabulut, general manager of the Dev Yapi-Is union.
Thousands of workers joined the demonstration, which was broken up by police and gendarmes deploying in riot control vehicles and firing tear gas, he said.
“They broke into the workers’ camp with 30 gendarmerie, broke down the doors and detained around 500 workers,” Karabulut told Reuters by phone. He said he was speaking from a local gendarmerie where he was seeking the workers’s release.
Opposition parliamentarian Ali Bayar, from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), put the number of those detained at around 400.
The workers’ quarters “look like a detention camp...When we went there this morning gendermarie soldiers were still detaining workers,” Bayar told Reuters.
The new airport, which Turkey says will become the biggest in the world, is one of the showcase projects of a 15-year construction boom under Erdogan who has overseen building of bridges, ports and railways which have transformed the country.
The growth has been fueled by cheap debt, however, and Erdogan said on Friday the government is freezing new investments to rein in inflation and support the lira, which has lost 40 percent against the dollar this year.
The airport is scheduled to open at the end of October, but Karabulut said that was in doubt because the remaining work would take another two months.
Unions have long complained about working conditions and labor safety at the airport, but under a state of emergency imposed after a failed 2016 military coup and only lifted in July, rights to strike or protest were curtailed.
In February, Turkey’s labor ministry said 27 workers had died at the airport since the start of work there in 2015, mainly from work accidents or health problems.
Workers have also complained about poor food at the site, bed bugs in their sleeping quarters and delayed salaries. Pictures they posted online showed cracks in the ceilings and walls of the container homes where they are housed.
Airport operator IGA said its CEO Kadri Samsunlu had met union representatives and was looking into their complaints.
Karabulut said the union had received only verbal pledges from IGA and wanted commitments in writing. But he said many workers were unable to continue protesting.
“Most of them had to go to work today under pressure and under threat,” he said. “So they went to work today unwillingly but they want the public to know that they will be protesting tonight if their friends are not released.”
Turkish police detain hundreds of protesting airport workers
Turkish police detain hundreds of protesting airport workers
- The protest broke out after a shuttle bus accident on Friday in which 17 workers were injured.
- Thousands of workers joined the demonstration, which was broken up by police and gendarmes deploying in riot control vehicles and firing tear gas.
UK condemns drone strikes across Sudan and blocking of aid as famine continues to rage
- Drone attacks by Rapid Support Forces include strike on humanitarian convoy that killed aid worker, and another in North Kordofan that killed 24 people, including 8 children
- Famine conditions reported in Darfur towns of Um Baru and Kernoi; British ambassador calls this a ‘devastating indictment’ of how warring factions ‘continue to block life-saving aid’
NEW YORK CITY: The UK on Friday condemned drone strikes by the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring military factions in Sudan, and accused the group and its rival, the Sudanese Armed Forces, of blocking life-saving aid while parts of Sudan’s Darfur region descend into famine.
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Sudan, requested by Britain, Bahrain and Denmark, the UK’s deputy ambassador, James Kariuki, told reporters that the latest alert from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned of famine conditions in the Darfur towns of Um Baru and Kernoi.
“This is a devastating indictment of how the SAF and RSF continue to block life-saving aid,” he added.
The ways in which they are doing this include blocking trade routes, disrupting supply chains and restricting humanitarian access, Kariuki said. Such actions are deliberately exacerbating the crisis, he warned, and constitute violations of international humanitarian law under UN Security Council Resolution 2417.
“Starvation must never be used as a weapon of war,” he added.
More than 33 million people across the country are now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, Kariuki said, making the humanitarian crisis in Sudan the worst in the world.
The UK also condemned recent RSF drone strikes across the country, including a reported attack on a World Food Programme convoy on Friday that killed an aid worker. Another RSF drone strike in North Kordofan had killed 24 people, including eight children, Kariuki said.
“Humanitarian workers must be able to deliver the response on the ground without obstruction and without retaliation,” he told the Security Council.
The civil war in Sudan began in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the SAF, led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.
Kariuki said authorities in the UK had imposed fresh sanctions last Thursday targeting six individuals suspected of committing atrocities or fueling the conflict in Sudan by supplying mercenaries and military equipment.
“These sanctions send a clear message that all those who perpetrate or profit from the brutal violence in Sudan will be held accountable, no matter how long it takes,” he added.
