We reproduce below the account of the Tekel tobacco-workers' strike, published by the ICC's section in Turkey.
On December
14th 2009, thousands of workers of Tekel enterprises from dozens of cities in Turkey
left their homes and families in order to travel to Ankara.
The workers of Tekel took this journey with the aim of struggling against the horrible
conditions forced upon them by the capitalist order. This honorable struggle of
the Tekel workers which has been going on for more than a month now, carried
the idea of a strike in which all workers would participate. By doing so, the
workers of Tekel started leading and carrying forward the working class
movement in the whole country. What we will try to give the account of here is
the story of what happened so far in the Tekel struggle. It should not be
forgotten that what this account concerns not just the Tekel workers, but the
workers of the whole world. We owe our warm thanks to the Tekel workers for
making the writing of this article possible by pushing the struggles of our
class forward, by their determined struggle and by explaining to us what they
went through, their experiences and thoughts.
