Since the beginning of this year, at least 91 children have lost their lives in workplaces in Türkiye. In November alone, 12 children died while being made to work. And these are only the numbers we could detect.
Protests against a state system exploiting child labour, called MESEM, are growing. After 16 young protesters were arrested in a demonstration, trade unions and left organisations are now mobilising.
Below, I share with you the statement and reaction regarding this issue from the Özgür Üniversite Hareketi (Free University Movement), which is waging a struggle as a university movement in Türkiye.
Have you ever trembled at the age of 15, standing before a press machine taller than you are, while a master shouted at your head? You cannot raise your voice against the insults, the bullying, and the “finish the job” pressures of the men you call “master.”
Because you think that if you speak up, you will fail the class, get expelled from school, or become a burden to your family. Yet, that pressure drives one not just to stress, but to death.
Arda, Muhammed Cansu, Nisa, and Tuğba
Arda was 14 years old. At the metal workshop in Istanbul where he was interning, his head got stuck in a sheet metal bending machine. For exactly 16 minutes, he writhed in agony between the gears of that cold machine. There was neither a teacher nor a master beside him. This system, which did not hear Arda’s scream, abandoned him to death.
Muhammed, who lost his life when compressed air was pumped into his rectum with a compressor while working in a carpentry workshop, was 15 years old.
Cansu, Nisa, and Tuğba burned to death in a cosmetic factory engaged in illegal production. Exactly one year prior, this place had been “officially” reported because it had no signage, no occupational safety, employed children as workers, and most of the workers were uninsured.
91 Lost Lives
Since the beginning of this year, at least 91 children have lost their lives in workplace murders. Just in November, at least 12 children died while being made to work. In the 2024-2025 academic year, at least 72 children died while working. Again, at least 16 children lost their lives while working under the scope of MESEM, the state’s “Vocational Education Center”.
What Minister Yusuf Tekin calls “skills training” is a market of death in desolate places where there is no job safety and where inspections never visit. We learned this while placing our friends into coffins.
Child labor in Türkiye is not “enthusiasm for learning a trade” or a “cultural tradition” as the government claims. Every child collecting paper on the streets, pressing metal in industry, or hoeing in the fields means fresh blood used to unclog the blocked veins of capitalist production relations. Capital views children not as the “guarantee of the future,” but as a “tool for reducing costs.”
The fundamental reason a high school student takes off their school uniform and puts on work overalls today is that their family has been pushed below the hunger threshold. Capitalism has melted workers’ wages and destroyed purchasing power to such an extent that supporting a household with a single salary has become impossible. The system says, “If you want to survive, it is not enough for you alone to be exploited; you must sacrifice your child to me as well.”
Capitalism needs factories, not schools. A youth that thinks critically, questions, and knows its history and rights is a risk to the order of exploitation. That is why the education system is deliberately unqualified and hollowed out. By saying “What will you become by studying? Come start work in the industry,” today’s production is made cheaper, and tomorrow’s “unquestioning, obedient” working class is being built today.
Schools Turned Into Labour Agencies
Capitalists capture the youth while they are still at high school desks to sustain the exploitation order. Behind fancy slogans like “We are raising the masters of the future” or “Vocational high schools are a national matter,” a bloody order operates where youth are torn from school desks and thrown into the gears of capital.
This system, called MESEM (Vocational Education Center), has turned schools into “employment agencies” and workshops into “death traps” for high schoolers. This is not an education project; this is child labor legalized by the state and funded by public resources!
One Day School, Four Days Exploitation
The system’s promise is simple: “1 day of school, 4 days of work per week.” Children as young as 14-15 are driven into heavy industry conditions, construction scaffolds, and chemical-filled workshops. High schoolers, whose wages and insurance are paid by the state, mean nothing but free labor for bosses.
In these businesses where there is no inspection and the concept of “Master Trainer” remains only on paper, our friends exist not as students, but as victims. In this system, human life is not even a line item in production costs. Occupational health and safety measures are seen as “unnecessary expenses” by bosses. Recent events are the most concrete proof of capital’s savage face. These deaths are not coincidences; these deaths are in the nature of the exploitation order.
Our friends, numbering nearly 1.5 million within the scope of the MESEM project, have been imprisoned in mobbing, insults, heavy working conditions, and unsafe environments. School administrations, inspection mechanisms, and the state are blind and deaf.
We Will Not Mourn, We Will Hold Them Accountable!
We know that the perpetrators of these deaths are the bosses who do not take safety measures for the sake of three cents of profit, as well as the Palace Regime that markets this wheel of exploitation as “education reform.” MESEM is the legalized form of child labor and must be abolished immediately.
Our struggle extends beyond the workshops to the streets. The state’s response to our demand for life is, as always, repression. For protesting against MESEM and refusing to remain silent about these murders, 16 of our young friends were detained. They were handcuffed simply for exposing this death machine.
Yet, this attempt to silence us has backfired. The MESEM reality has finally awakened a deep echo in society. Unions and leftist organizations have mobilized, organizing both mass rallies and joint solidarity actions for our detained comrades. The anger accumulating in the workshops has now spilled onto the squares.
We reject capital’s reign rising upon our bodies! We will hold accountable for all our friends massacred in workplace murders.
The cold gears that crushed 14-year-old Arda do not turn in isolation; they are powered by the ruthless demands of international capital. This system of exploitation is not unique to Türkiye; it is the face of capitalism everywhere. The cheap labor extracted from our vocational schools feeds the supply chains of multinational corporations. Thus, our struggle is international. The fight against child labor in Türkiye is inseparable from the struggle against sweatshops across the globe.
End child labor! Close MESEM, provide the right to qualified and free education.
Photo: Özgür Üniversite Hareketi (Free University Movement)
