Pınar Öğünç

Pınar Öğünç

Looking at a hundred years of workers
In the 19th century, as wage labour relations became widespread in different sectors, crafts, agriculture and then industry, both the capital and the working class in the Ottoman Empire, which, like every empire, was built on a class society, had a multi-communal, multi-religious and multi-lingual structure. According to Çetinkaya, there is a rupture that must be mentioned here: ‘the construction of the nation-state, the process of nationalisation and the extermination of different communities in various ways through methods such as ethnic cleansings, genocides and exchange’. This political project also meant cutting off important elements from the working class and the working class movement, and cutting the way for socialist and Marxist movements.
2 March 2025
Looking at a hundred years of workers
In the 19th century, as wage labour relations became widespread in different sectors, crafts, agriculture and then industry, both the capital and the working class in the Ottoman Empire, which, like every empire, was built on a class society, had a multi-communal, multi-religious and multi-lingual structure. According to Çetinkaya, there is a rupture that must be mentioned here: ‘the construction of the nation-state, the process of nationalisation and the extermination of different communities in various ways through methods such as ethnic cleansings, genocides and exchange’. This political project also meant cutting off important elements from the working class and the working class movement, and cutting the way for socialist and Marxist movements.
2 March 2025
"I want to hand over this archive and be liberated”
Political documentary photographer Ali Öz, as he calls himself, is not currently working for a publishing organisation. But for a very long time, he has not needed a contract to record Turkey's social and political life. Ali Öz's photographic archive is full of images documenting the story of labour and at the same time recording all kinds of social actions in almost fifty years of Turkey's history. For Öz, who sees journalism not as a job, but as the main endeavour at the centre of his life, which motivation weighs more heavily: political responsibility, professional appetite or the desire to document?
9 February 2025
A worrying year for rights
Turkey lived a period believing that torture and ill-treatment fell behind, convinced by this showcase. Yet, this year alone, 692 people or their relatives have applied to the HRFT with allegations of torture and ill-treatment. This is only the number of those who consider applying to a human rights institution in case of victimization, and who have the power and means to do so. Likewise, 2024 was a year in which freedom of assembly and demonstration was largely ignored. According to the data of the HRA Documentation Unit, at least 4,368 people were took into custody under torture and ill-treatment as a result of the intervention of law enforcement forces in peaceful protests.
9 February 2025
On the territory of the global factory
The last few years have been a period in which every problem that can be discussed under the heading of agriculture has deepened and multiplied for Turkey, which continues to boast of being an agricultural country because it does not face the real landscape. Agricultural lands are being sacrificed for investments in other sectors such as energy, mining, construction and tourism, which are seen as the main vein of the growth fetish.
23 January 2025
Shame indeed had changed sides
Gisèle Pelicot, 72 years old, has won so much admiration and respect for the way she handled the judicial process concerning the gang rape of which she was the victim, that she has become a symbol of courage in recent years, going beyond 2024. “Shame must change sides” she said, “it's not us who should be ashamed, it's them. I don't want any woman who has been raped to feel shame anymore."
23 January 2025
Education in the midst of multiple crises
One of the distinctive features of this year is that the number of children who are out of education despite being of compulsory education age is at the highest level of the last three years. Income inequality has reached its highest level in the last 18 years, signalling the severity of the economic crisis in education. 42 out of every 100 children are poor. ERG's report reveals that the number of students between the ages of 6-17 who are out of education increased by 38.4 per cent compared to the previous year.
5 January 2025
Report documenting genocide against Palestinians
Amnesty International has examined and documented Israel's policies and actions against the Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and, within the framework of international law, has named what has happened and is happening: Genocide. This new 300-page report, the first of its kind, is based on interviews with 212 people, including Palestinian survivors, local officials in Gaza, health workers, humanitarian NGO workers, analyses of a wide range of visual and digital data, published news reports, and statements by officials representing various institutions of the Israeli state. We talked to Ruhat Sena Akşener, Director of Amnesty International Turkey, about the report titled ‘You Feel Like You're Not Human-Israel's Genocide against Palestinians in Gaza’, which leads to the determination of ‘genocidal intent’.
5 January 2025
“Turkey's problem is not ageing, but ageing in poverty”
‘’Politicians does talk about family but the conventional family consisting of mum, dad, children and the elderly does not exist in Turkey. The family is transforming, the family has never been a sterile environment. Besides, Turkey is trying to provide all the care service through this conventional family. How will people living alone receive support? What about the elderly who have lost their children or the elderly who have chosen to live differently? This is a policy blind to society. It also has nothing to do with increasing fertility because the number of poor elderly will not decrease when the number of babies increases. As well as the existing elderly population, let's also think about the old age of children who are forced to work in temporary, mobile jobs and in the agricultural sector, young people who are currently working in flexible employment. Moreover, retirement means becoming poorer and poorer in Turkey."
22 December 2024
From police barricades to Instagram screens: A new map of Suriçi (Diyarbakır) that leads to amnesia
I wander around Suriçi, using both my own testimonies and the memory provided to me by journalism by listening to witnesses and as a map. After a hundred days of conflict, the police barricades and screens that I last saw in 2019 have been removed from some streets that were closed for years. They have removed, but many of them seem to have opened neither to the old nor to the new, but to gaps that freeze space in time. As I wander around, I listen to the old inhabitants of Sur. One of them is a construction worker, he migrated to another district when his house was demolished. What is significant is that now, if there is a job in construction, he comes to his old neighborhood to work. Another is a plumber whose house, shop and tools were leveled in Sur. They are collectively paying installments to own a new Sur house.
22 December 2024
While you are reading these lines they are cutting
The last destructive blow of the holding that gets sturdy as it leans on the political power. Preparations for the ‘Halilağa Copper Quarry Capacity Increase, Ore Enrichment Plant and Waste Storage Facility’ to be built in Hacıbekirler village of Çanakkale Bayramiç have begun by cutting down trees on 5200 decares of land. On 9 November, minibuses, buses and vehicles departing from different parts of the Aegean, Thrace and Anatolia park on both sides of the road. When a person cries with choking breath for a tree, it brings to mind the mythic past of this geography, the Homeric texts. As in the tragedies where pain rises from human bodies to the clouds of Zeus, where vows of revenge and anger do not fit in the mountains, women cry out “do not cut down our trees”, doubled over from shouting.
8 December 2024
While capital blocks the way to the railway stations once again
Words get mixed up with words. Railway porterage which ended when wheels were invented for suitcases... Trains and porters carrying the gold coming from Europe while the Central Bank was opening... The killing of public spaces and the concept of public interest... Tugay Bey always reads the industrial heritage and the plans of capital through labour. If the skyscrapers rent project, which was put forward at the time, could not be realised, those who resisted by looking at the railway stations from this perspective, those who forced both the judicial path and the streets, are of great importance in this. What 668 weeks means! Haydarpaşa Solidarity will come together for the 668th time this Sunday and raise their voices against this new project for Haydarpaşa Station.
24 November 2024
Authoritarian “solutions” where non-solutions are deliberately chosen
It is important for those who do not want to waste the slightest chance of a permanent solution and an honorable peace to calmly make sense of this ebb and flow of politics. The report titled “Looking at the Kurdish Problem with its Changing Dynamics after 2015 in Terms of Authoritarian Conflict Management” puts some of the pieces in place and offers a perspective that can serve as a source. The report is based on the basic idea that authoritarian regimes consider keeping conflict processes at the ‘unresolved’ stage as a kind of solution for themselves, and that they realise this not only with military force but also by supporting it with a series of political, spatial and economic policies. The underlying structural causes of the conflict are not specifically addressed, any democratic space for a solution is seen as a threat, and the involvement of international actors is not recognised. It can be coordinated with neoliberal policies and corruption can be used as a tool.
24 November 2024
Talking about racism in Turkey
The rising right, not only in Turkey but all over the world, together with the strengthening "fascist international", has gone beyond the timid tone that begins with "I am not a racist, but..." and comes to a point where "certain race" exclamations are flying in the air and they are rebelling against the "taking away of the right to racism". A dose that has become a part of everyday language, mixed with humour, demanding not invisibility but extinction from the target audience is becoming normalised. The conference on ‘Racism in Turkey’, organised by Istos Publishing with the support of the London School of Economics on 19-20 October, aimed to bring all these issues to the visible side of the table and discuss them.
14 November 2024
Looking at the time, leaving it to time
Until November 11, one of the venues of the Çanakkale Biennial is the Korfmann Library, one of Turkey's most important libraries focused on archaeology. Before this building became a library dedicated to Manfred Osman Korfmann, who headed the Troy excavations, it was a tobacco warehouse, but it was originally built as the Infant School of the adjacent Surp Kevork Church, founded in 1669. David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, who came to Çanakkale for the opening, work on shared political concerns. Experimental videos and performances that touch on the colonialism embedded in the root fringes of scientific knowledge and technological progress, and the racism that permeates the the visual symbols of popular culture...
28 October 2024
While women are becoming twice as poor
Women feel gender-based discrimination in the labor market at every stage, from job search to working conditions, from office life to unemployment. The victimizations that diversify with advancing age are completely invisible despite affecting millions of women. Kadın İşçi (Woman Worker, www.kadinisci.org) provides valuable journalism that focuses its editorial line on women's labor. The Women Workers' Solidarity Association, which created the website, recently announced a report titled “Gender-Based Discrimination Faced by Women Over 50 in the Field of Paid Labor and Solution Suggestions” and addressed the invisibility of this field. So what do women over 50 do?
28 October 2024
What crime, whose punishment, what justice?
Prisons described as Type S and Type Y Penitentiary Institutions or High Security Penal Institutions, which became operational after 2021, mostly consist of single-person cells, where isolation prevails due to both their architectural structures and practices. The sky is not even visible in the prison yard, all communication is provided by megaphones and buttons, which is completely dehumanizing, and open visits are even more isolating as they are separate for each prisoner. This is why they are referred to as “wells”. The Human Rights Association's report on the issue warns of the psychiatric disorders that these conditions may cause, as well as the physical illnesses they may cause in the short, medium and long term.
20 October 2024
History revived by a tombstone
An old house built with traditional architecture in Karacaköy, Çatalca, 100 km away from Istanbul, looking with a tired face from the past centuries. While the residents of the house, who want to renew the flooring, are working downstairs, they suddenly take a break in amazement, and a tombstone written in the Greek alphabet appears from the ground. When the meaning is deciphered, the following is revealed: “Here lies Chrysoula Rodaki, servant of God, March 1887”. What follows is director Kerem Soyyılmaz's journey in search of the former owners of his grandparents' house. His aunt and cousins, who spent the most time in that house, accompany him on this journey. Searching for Rodakis, won the Best Documentary Film Award at the Adana Golden Boll Film Festival last year, among many other awards. The movie is also available on BluTV.
13 October 2024
A political prisoner Armenian woman in an Ottoman prison
In the light of what we know so far, this book can be described as "the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Ottoman Empire". In her foreword, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu also states that it is generally the first prison memoir written by a woman in the Middle East. So who was Vartuhi Kalantar? What caused her to be tried in the Martial Court and imprisoned in the General Prison?
6 October 2024
“There is an uneasiness like a birth pain”
She is among those who stand in front of, among those who resist, in the midst of an attack that forces children and 80-year-old people to work, leaves young people alone towards a pitch-black future, pushes women either to their homes or to unregistered jobs, and in short, workers' rights are being scythed day by day. Neslihan Acar, 38, is the cahirperson of DGD-SEN, the independent union representing warehouse, port, shipyard and maritime workers. When we add the other strikes, vigils and protests that have sprouted under the umbrella of other unions affiliated to UMUT-SEN, 24 hours of her life are filled with this struggle.
4 October 2024
The psychology that minorities are pushed to, minorities in psychology
In which year was the first graduate thesis on the Kurdish issue in psychology? You are surprised by this much: 2009. This information is from the issue titled “Azınlığın Psikolojisi, Psikolojinin Azınlığı (Psychology of the Minority, Minority of Psychology)” of Onto magazine, which has been publishing online since 2013. The issue, which consists of nine articles and an interview with the team of Psychology Kurdî magazine, is also meaningful and thought-provoking for readers outside the field. Rudi Sayat Pulatyan's article titled “Identity Perceptions of Young Armenians from Turkey and the Assassination of Hrant Dink” is based on his thesis based on her own experiences. Hiding the cross, having a “safe” Turkish name next to the Armenian name are among the lively tendencies.
22 September 2024
Wild tourism makes us say: “turists go home!”
The other damage of over-tourism is at the economic level. Those who have experience in Turkey's tourism hotspots will know that this is a factor that drives up prices in everything from services to health; the local economy, temporarily inflated by tourism, spends the rest of the year suffering from this damage. Accommodating so many people creates a different range of problems: Rental prices generally increase due to houses rented to tourists in various forms. This increase can reach a level that forces city residents to migrate to other "tourism-free" regions. Although mass tourism may periodically appear to be an area of employment for those living in that region, it is not reflected on the local residents as the tourism sector is based on the “tourism” and transfer of cheap labor at the national level. All over the world, the tourism industry is characterized by labor exploitation and conditions that disregard workers' rights and sometimes even human dignity.
12 September 2024
“It is very difficult to live in a society with a strong death drive”
As soon as the government's debate on “euthanasia” of stray animals, an irrational concept for this issue, became law and was published in the Official Gazette, news of massacres started coming from all over Turkey. The images of dogs and cats tortured to death are blood-curdling. Even more frightening is the social consent behind these scenes and what they may lead to over time. We talked about the subject with psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Specialist Dr. Didem Aksüt, because we need it.
5 September 2024
Children “officially” made laborers
A sad balance sheet: According to the data compiled by the Health and Safety Labour Watch * from the events it has access to, at least 42 child workers lost their lives in the first seven months of 2024. It is known that at least nine of the dead children were working within the scope of the MESEM program. ** Amendments to the Vocational Education Law in 2016 and 2021 paved the way for children to be used as cheap labor with a one-day "training" a week that remains on paper. Workerized children die while working and live a life without workers' rights, subjected to intense violence and physically and mentally injured. We discussed the issue with Ezgi Koman, who has been working in the field of child rights for years and is part of a program focusing on MESEMs at the FISA (Fikir ve Sanat Atölyesi) Child Rights Center.
29 August 2024
The potential of digital urban activism
Social media is a big cauldron, and a cauldron full of useless, deliberately manipulative messages. Although it is necessary to be visible and stand out, prioritizing its requirements can also cripple such digital activism. In this sense, Yaşar Adanalı's suggestion is that rather than relying on the power of a collective account that brings everyone's experience together, more residents/activists should produce video content for this purpose and the resulting pressure should lead institutions and initiatives working in the field to change their communication strategies. Programs that have a community-building perspective and work like an "impact academy" will thus feed digital activism.
11 August 2024
Dark rivers
The report, which is the result of an eight-day field research in the Büyük Menderes Basin, goes deeper by focusing on a specific region, but it does not stop there. It also has a perspective that reaches from this river to the seas of the world; for example, it draws a pattern of environmental destruction with lines drawn from a village in Aydın to the global scale. Scientific data strengthens the report, but the report transforms the narrative into a “story” without drowning the reader in data, sometimes like a diary, sometimes with notches from literature and psychology.
29 July 2024
Bottomless pits of history
This is not a classic family history search story. Uskan investigates her grandmother, who passed away when Uskan was 16, and whose Armenian identity she knew nothing about because grandmother kept it a secret, and of course her mother Maria, in her village, through official documents and possible church records. This is a search that considers it natural not to find anything because it Uskan aware of what has happened. She wanders through the narrow streets of Adana, the dilapidated corridors of the Apkarian School, and the wild nature of the countryside, turning the camera into a hand that touches the present.
14 July 2024
Becoming commonplace of de facto state of emergency
We will get to the data, but what we will eventually reach is thought-provoking. The HRFT (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey) describes this process as "a progression from a state practice that systematically rights violations to the total abandonment of the idea of a rights-based regime". Universal law, of which Turkey is a part, fails to deter perpetrators. An equally important result is that these violations of rights take place in front of the eyes of the wider society and become normalized. In fact, places of torture have gone beyond the boundaries of four walls and spread to peaceful demonstrations expressing the demands for the most basic democratic rights and freedom of expression.
30 June 2024

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