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Turkish trade unions in death throes

Restrictive laws and government hostility have crippled Turkey’s once-mighty labor movement, which made a poor showing this May Day.
Plain clothes police walk on the main pedestrian street of Istiklal in central Istanbul during a May Day demonstration in Istanbul May 1, 2014. Turkish police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber pellets on Thursday to try to stop thousands of people, some armed with fire bombs and fireworks, from defying a ban on May Day rallies and reaching Istanbul's central Taksim square.   REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY  - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST)   - RTR3NEGD
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On May 1, 1977, a human sea of 500,000 workers packed Istanbul’s Taksim Square, flowing in from all over Turkey. Kemal Turkler, the head of the Revolutionary Labor Unions Confederation (DISK, Turkey’s largest leftist trade union), was in the middle of his speech when bullets rained on the crowd from the 10th floor of a hotel and the roof of a public building, both overlooking the square.

Panic led to a deadly stampede. The death toll, announced the following day, included 28 people crushed, one overrun by an armored vehicle and five killed by gunfire, in addition to 136 injured. The scenes of chaos remained engraved deep in Turkish memory. 

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