“Our Lives Were Not as Valuable as an Animal”1: Workers in State-Run Industries in World-War-II Turkey

• Published in: International review of social history Vol. 54; no. S17; pp. 143 - 166
• Main Author: Nacar, Can
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.12.2009
• Subjects: Activism; Agricultural production; Coal mining; Economic conditions; Employment policies; Factories; Health services; Industrial development; Journalists; Labor force; Military service; Mines; Narratives; Nationalization; Nutrition; Peasants; Private enterprise; Public officials; Social conditions & trends; Social exclusion; Social history; Social policy; Social services; States; Verbal accounts; Wages & salaries; War; Wholesale Price Index-US; Wool; Workers; Working class; Working conditions; World War II; Turkey
• ISSN: 0020-8590; 1469-512X
• DOI: 10.1017/S0020859009990277

This article explores the lives of Sümerbank and Etibank workers inside and outside their workplaces during World War II. First, it examines their social origins and the process of recruiting those workers. Secondly, it draws attention to the unhealthy conditions in which they worked, the sundry forms of violence they were subjected to, and the insufficient wages they received. It goes on to analyze social services – nutrition, accommodation, and healthcare facilities – provided by those two enterprises. Drawing on official reports, petitions, and workers’ personal accounts, it highlights the inadequacies of those facilities, and the hierarchical and exclusionary practices inherent in them. Following this framework, it responds to the studies which portray workers in state-run enterprises as privileged government officials and those enterprises as centers of social education. Finally, it focuses on workers’ reactions to their social conditions in the form of high turnover rates. The discussions of politicians, government officials, and journalists revolving around high turnover rates suggest that this reactive form of labor activism played an important role in the formulation and enactment of social policies concerning labor.