Work resumes at İstanbul’s new airport

CONSTRUCTION workers at İstanbul’s new airport resumed work on Monday, with heavy police and gendarmerie presence at the site, two labour unions said, after protests last week over work conditions.

The airport is a centrepiece of a 15-year construction boom under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It has an initial planned capacity of 90 million passengers a year, making it one of the world’s biggest airports and a pillar of Turkey’s lucrative tourism industry.

“The reason the majority of our friends have resumed work is not because their requests were met by the company,” said Ali Öztutan, president of İyi-Sen union.

Mr Öztutan said there was a heavy security presence at the airport, which is due to open next month, and that workers were pressured to resume work with threats to not pay them, lay them off or detain them.

Özgur Karabulut, general manager of Dev Yapı-İş union, said it was not clear whether the protests would continue.

“The housing area is full of police and gendarmerie, they won’t even let the workers breathe,” he said.

A statement issued on Sunday by unions complained of late salary payments, poor food and “awful” conditions at the workers’ living quarters. The “airport construction site is no different to concentration camp for workers,” it said.

In February, Turkey’s labour ministry said 27 workers had died at the airport since the start of work in 2015, mainly from accidents or health problems.

Protests started last Friday after a shuttle bus accident injured 17 workers. Thousands of workers joined the demonstration, which was broken up by police who deployed in riot control vehicles and detained over 400 people.

Video footage, which the union said was from the construction site, showed hundreds of men chanting: “We are workers, we are right, we will have our way one way or another.”

A total of 43 people among those detained were sent to an İstanbul court to rule on what action would be taken and it released 19 of them subject to judicial monitoring, CNN Türk said.

The court jailed pending trial the remaining 24 people. They faced provisional charges such resisting police, damaging public property and contravening the law governing protests.

The unions said they would continue to fight until working conditions were improved and the detained workers were released and allowed to resume their jobs.

While the airport is scheduled to open at the end of October, Mr Karabulut said that was in doubt because the remaining work would take another two months.

However, airport operator İga said on Sunday that work at the airport was on schedule and the planned October 29 opening would not be delayed. Steps had been taken to improve working conditions and living quarters, which workers say were infested with bedbugs, it said.

Veli Ağbaba, parliamentarian from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said authorities did not allow him and others within 10 kilometres of the construction site on Monday.

“There is nothing that cannot be solved in the requests of the airport workers,” he said, calling on the labour ministry to investigate the claims of poor work safety conditions.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s environment minister said last Saturday that despite a government freeze on new investments, Ankara will press ahead with plans to dig a 45-kilometre shipping canal running parallel to the Bosphorus,

Environment and Urban Minister Murat Kurum said the ministry was moving ahead to acquire land along the “Kanal İstanbul” route and develop plans with contractors. He added that work will start this year.