Contribution of the Communist Party of Turkey

Contribution by TKP in the ECA Teleconference “The tasks of communists in organising the
Communist Party in workplaces and working-class neighbourhoods”

Dear comrades,

Today, we will focus mainly on sharing TKP’s experience in relation to the two dimensions of our meeting’s theme.

We believe that any serious discussion on working-class organization in Turkey today must begin with a clear recognition: the workplace remains the central site of exploitation, and therefore the primary terrain of class struggle and organization.

The labor force has become increasingly unstable and fragmented. Flexible employment, informal work, subcontracting systems, and high unemployment have weakened stable working-class identities and traditional forms of organization.

However, what should be emphasized in Turkey case is that, this fragmentation has not eliminated collective social ties. On the contrary, it has shifted their character. Family relations, neighborhood networks, and hometown connections still play a decisive role in shaping workers’ daily lives, political perceptions, and cultural orientations. In many cases, these networks compensate for the weakening of workplace-based solidarity, which is a result of a growing fear of unemployment.

This dual reality creates both a challenge and a strategic question: how can working-class organization be rebuilt under conditions where the workplace is weakened as a social space, while informal social networks remain strong?

For the Communist Party of Turkey, the answer begins not by abandoning the workplace, but by reinforcing it as the core of political organization—while expanding the terrain of struggle into the social spaces where workers actually reproduce their daily lives.

In Turkey, this task is made more difficult by deliberate political intervention. Over the past two decades, the ruling political framework has systematically restricted union rights, undermined collective bargaining, and weakened the right to strike. These attacks have not been incidental; they are structural components of a broader strategy to fragment labor and prevent collective resistance.

In response to this, TKP places strong emphasis on rebuilding workplace-centered organization in forms adapted to current conditions. While TKP members are getting organized in the unions and holding important positions in some of them, TKP’s focus on workplaces continue with a specific concentration including some other tools. Over the past year, TKP successfully established 22 organizational units at new workplaces. These unites are primarily in the metal and healthcare sectors.

Another key development in this regard is the establishment of the Workers’ Representatives Council. This council brings together worker representatives from unions, professional associations, ongoing workplace resistance movements across different sectors, as well as TKP workplace units and committees.

Its purpose is not symbolic representation. It is designed as a concrete mechanism to connect fragmented struggles, amplify existing resistance, and create a coordinated political direction for working-class organization. It is an attempt to overcome isolation—both between workers in different workplaces and between different forms of struggle.

Alongside this, the “Breath Down the Bosses’ Necks” network has played a complementary role. It functions as a flexible structure that connects workplace conflicts, shares experiences of resistance, and supports workers facing similar patterns of exploitation since 2018. Although it is not a union, over the last one and a half year, there have been struggles in 42 workplaces where this network is involved, resulting in gains in 15 of them.

Rather than replacing unions, these forms emerge as a response and sometimes play a complementary role to the constraints imposed on traditional labor organization under current conditions.

Together, these initiatives reflect a central strategic understanding: workplace struggle cannot be reduced to isolated, individual conflicts. Without coordination, solidarity, and political direction, even the most militant workplace resistance risks remaining temporary and localized. 

However, the reality of Turkish capitalism also imposes constraints. The weakening of stable workplaces, the spread of informal labor, and the mobility of workers between jobs make it increasingly difficult for workplace-based organization alone to sustain continuity.

This does not reduce the importance of the workplace. On the contrary, it makes the problem more urgent. It forces the question of how workplace struggles can be sustained, connected, and socially rooted under conditions of instability.

It is precisely here that the relationship between workplace and neighborhood becomes politically decisive.

TKP does not treat neighborhoods as an alternative to workplaces, but as a complementary and reinforcing space of organization.

District houses, established in working-class neighborhoods, represent the most concrete expression of this approach. These are not traditional party offices. They are designed as open, accessible, and living spaces embedded directly in working-class daily life.

Their political significance lies in addressing a fundamental problem: capitalism does not only exploit workers in production; it also isolates them socially. It weakens the capacity for collective thinking, collective decision-making, and collective action.

In many cases, workers who hesitate to engage politically in their workplaces find more accessible forms of participation in their neighborhoods. This does not replace workplace struggle, but it helps rebuild the social foundations that make it possible.

District houses emerged precisely as a response to this fragmentation. They function as spaces where solidarity is rebuilt in practice, not only discussed in theory. 

District houses also serve as bridges between neighborhood life and workplace struggle. They provide organizational continuity for broader initiatives such as women’s solidarity committees and workplace-based resistance networks. In this sense, they help connect different dimensions of working-class life that capitalism has fragmented.

The strategic importance of this lies in integration. Workplace organization without social grounding risks isolation. Neighborhood organization without workplace anchoring risks political dilution. The strength of the approach lies in connecting the two.

Experience over recent years shows that these organizational forms develop unevenly. Some district houses and workplace structures have become highly dynamic, with strong participation and initiative. Others are still in earlier stages of development, struggling to achieve the same level of continuity and engagement.

To conclude, the workplace remains the core site of exploitation and resistance. It is where class antagonism is structurally produced. But without extending organization into neighborhoods—into the spaces where workers live, reproduce their lives, and form social ties—workplace struggle risks remaining isolated and vulnerable.

The task, for TKP, is integrating both: strengthening workplace-based coordination through structures like the Workers’ Representatives Council and workplace networks, while simultaneously deepening neighborhood-based organization through district houses and solidarity centers.

Only through this dual structure, linking production and daily life, struggle and solidarity, workplace and neighborhood, can a durable and unified working-class movement be rebuilt under contemporary conditions.