Turkey is being governed by a persistent economic crisis. In these conditions where the minimum wage has become the normal wage, the purchasing power of wage earners continues to decrease in the face of inflation. In addition, while child labor has become widespread with the MESEM project, refugee labor is also intensively involved in the production process. While children are cut off from education, it has become a necessity for them to need a wage to sustain daily life.
Absolute poverty, i.e. the basic needs for human survival such as shelter, health, food, etc., cannot be met with the income of one wage worker in a family. While it has become compulsory for children to work, this situation is being normalized. With the transformations in education, especially in the last 15 years, it has been shown that parents will not be able to find a job with the education their children will receive.
Again, the expansion of vocational schools was turned into an education policy aimed at reducing the attractiveness of formal education. While apprenticeship schools were transformed into vocational training centers in 2016, this project was expanded in 2021. These children, who go from work to school for four days, receive thirty percent of the minimum wage if they are in grades 9-10-11, and this wage is covered by the state. In 12th grade, these children receive fifty percent of the minimum wage and their wages are also covered by the state. For the capitalist class, these children are not cheap but free labor.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the employment of children in hazardous work. Turkey is among the signatory states to this convention. However, the fact that the sectors where children can be employed are included in Article 71 of the Labor Law No. 4857 paves the way for which jobs children can be employed. The ambiguity in both conventions and laws helps child labor to become widespread.
According to the 2025 report on occupational homicides by the OHS Council, at least 94 children lost their lives in occupational homicides while working. It is seen that the problem has become structural beyond its legal dimensions. Responding to a problem caused by neoliberal policies with a basic policy will provide a solution to the problem. The struggle for the implementation of a centralized-public-planned economic model is inseparable from the struggle against child labor.
On November 8, 7 workers, including 6 women (3 of them children), lost their lives in a fire and explosion at Ravive Kozmetik in Dilovası, Kocaeli. I think it is also important to remind the question of what these children were doing there and to remind this issue for the healthy conduct of the struggle.