A year and a half ago, Turkish Finance Minister Naci Agbal voiced reservations about selling off publicly owned sugar plants, which had long been slated for privatization. Speaking in the rural province of Corum in September 2016, Agbal stressed that the chain of production in sugar plants involved local sugar beet suppliers, meaning that whole communities living on agriculture could be affected. “When it comes to privatizing sugar factories, one has to think 40 times,” he said.

Whether the government thought it over 40 times remains unknown, but on Feb. 20, the Prime Ministry Privatization Administration announced its intention to sell off some of the 25 plants of the publicly owned Turkish Sugar Factories Company (Turkseker).

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Turkey accounts for 7% of global sugar beet production, which makes it the world’s sixth-largest producer after the United States, France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. The country produces about 2.6 million tons of sugar from sugar beets annually, half of which comes from Turkseker factories and the other half from the plants of the Pankobirlik cooperative.

The Privatization Administration said it would sell off 14 factories — most of them in relatively poor regions in central and eastern Turkey — and invited bids from April 3-18. The plan triggered harsh objections from a wide range of quarters — factory employees and their trade unions, local communities, sugar beet producers, opposition parties and consumers across the nation. The scale of the protests is likely to grow in the coming days.