Market without public guarantees, workers without pay: Striking findings from CHP's Özdağ

CHP's Özdağ, in his assessment starting with the miners who continue their protests, explained the collapse of the energy market following the privatizations carried out by the AKP government with the following words:

Doruk Madencilik A.Ş. recently issued a public statement. It explained why electricity production stopped at the Yunus Emre Thermal Power Plant, which operates in the Mihalıççık district of Eskişehir, and why workers have not been able to receive their salaries for months. The reason was clear: "Thermal power plants that do not have a fixed-price sales agreement under free market conditions are either stopping production or operating at low capacity." The solution was also clear: A fixed-price purchase agreement must be made with the Electricity Generation Corporation (EÜAŞ); without this, the plant cannot operate, and workers cannot be paid.

The company, without realizing it, summarized the fundamental contradiction of Turkey's energy privatization: A private thermal power plant cannot be operated without a public guarantee. There is a market, but it does not function. There is a market price, but it does not ensure profitability. The worker's salary, however, depends on a purchase guarantee to be signed with a public company.

Same Model from Distribution to Production

This picture is the reflection in the production leg of the distribution company spiral that we discussed in our first article titled "There is No Energy in the Bill, There is Wealth Transfer" (12punto.com, April 2, 2026 — https://12punto.com.tr/bakis-acisi/kamu-zarari-pahasina-kar-garantisi-sirketleri-degil-halki-subvanse-edin-135134). On the distribution side, private companies earn guaranteed income while failing to invest; the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK) is forced to intervene. On the production side, private companies are dependent on public guaranteed purchases to operate coal plants. In both cases, the model is the same: the state assumes the risk and cost, while the private company receives the income. The worker is left in between.

The Record of Yıldızlar Holding

The history of Yıldızlar SSS Holding, to which Doruk Madencilik is affiliated, concretely shows how this model works. When the holding could not pay its debt to TETAŞ for the Osmangazi Electricity Distribution AŞ, which it took over for 485 million dollars in a 2010 privatization tender, it forced the EPDK to seize the board of directors in 2013. This was the first company among the 21 privatized electricity distribution regions to be subject to state intervention.

Political connections are also noteworthy: Former Energy Minister Taner Yıldız served as an executive board member of Yıldızlar Holding after his ministerial term. The company's CEO was an advisor to former Finance Minister Naci Ağbal. In 2022, the Yunus Emre Thermal Power Plant, which was waiting under the trusteeship of the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), was transferred to Doruk Madencilik—that is, to the same holding company. The holding had once again taken over assets that had left the state's hands.

It is no coincidence that a holding company that transferred the income it obtained by failing to fulfill its investment obligations for five years in the distribution region to other areas, and then withdrew from the scene with EPDK intervention, grew in the production sector during the same period. Despite this record, the AKP government transferred the thermal power plant under the TMSF to the same holding company. The structure that failed in distribution was rewarded in production.

Now, the company explains that market prices have fallen as a result of the increase in the production share of renewable energy due to increased rainfall, and that the thermal power plant cannot operate profitably. As a solution, it demands a guaranteed purchase from the public company EÜAŞ. This time, the public will once again assume the private company's market risk.

Hunger Strike in Kurtuluş Park

Today, the workers on hunger strike in Kurtuluş Park are paying the price for this cycle. While the company waits for a fixed-price agreement with EÜAŞ to pay three months of salaries, 1,000 workers are in uncertainty. Instead of expressing this reality, the company's statement preferred a language that labeled the workers as those producing "disinformation." Police detained the miners who were marching from Eskişehir to Ankara.

The Real Balance Sheet of Privatization

Turkey's energy privatization model is based not on the competitive dynamics of the market, but on the privatization of profit and the nationalization of risk. Guaranteed income in distribution, guaranteed purchase in production, public bank loans in financing—the model does not work without these. When it does not work, the bill is charged first to the worker, and then to the consumer.

If privatization has become a tool not to open a sector to competition, but to provide a guaranteed flow of income to certain companies, there is a structural problem. Doruk Madencilik's statement is one of the clearest admissions of this problem. This order, where profit belongs to companies, risk to the state, and victimization to the worker, is unsustainable.