HKP protests MESEM: Don't let Arda, Erol Can, and Zekai die!

The Vocational Training Centers (MESEM), established by the Ministry of National Education in 2016, are being debated due to child labor and the recent increase in deaths. Members of the HKP Gebze District Organization held a protest for the children who lost their lives in workplaces where they were interning through the MESEM program. Gathering in front of the historic fountain in the Gebze Old Bazaar, HKP members carried a banner that read, "End the MESEM practice that has turned into a source of cheap labor for the moneyed elite and caused our children to be sacrificed in work-related murders."

Delivering the press statement, HKP Gebze Youth Committee member Burak Göl said, "Our children are losing their lives one after another in work-related murders in MESEMs, which were implemented by the AKP's Ministry of National Education and serve as a legal cover for child labor."

'OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED IN WORK-RELATED MURDERS'

Stating that 17-year-old Beyzanur Hatmorioğlu suffered burns on 80 percent of her body on June 20, 2023, through the MESEM project, and that 16-year-old Zekai Dikici on September 26, 2023, 14-year-old Arda Tonbul on January 9, and 15-year-old Erol Can Yavuz on January 23 lost their lives, Burak Göl said, "Our children enter the hell of factories in the prime of their lives, and their lifeless bodies come out. Our children are being slaughtered in work-related murders every day."

'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH'

Saying, "We do not want to surrender our children to death at a young age," Burak Göl noted the following:

"We say no to our children being sacrificed as cheap labor for the moneyed elite by the Vocational Training Centers (MESEM), to children being pushed out of education, and to money being funneled to bosses under the name of incentives through MESEM. With the money transferred to the moneyed elite through MESEMs, the necessary tools, equipment, and machinery should be purchased for vocational schools so that children can learn their trades where they belong, which is in schools.

Don't let Arda, Erol Can, and Zekai die, don't let Beyzanur be burned. Enough is enough. The murderer of the hundreds of our children who lose their lives in work-related murders every year due to the profit greed of the moneyed elite is the AKP government and the order of the moneyed elite they guard. We will hold them accountable for our children whose dreams were destroyed, who were subjected to all kinds of heavy and dangerous conditions in factories in the prime of their lives, and who were exposed to the exploitation of cheap labor."