It is a bitterly cold winter day in the central Anatolian city of Tokat. The thermometer reads -3 °C (27 °F). Sunduz Akkan, a mother of three, bundles up and goes to the Sik Makas factory where she worked until October.
The plant’s roughly 1,700 employees stopped receiving paychecks in mid-2025. On October 7, workers went on strike — and the next day about 1,000 Sik Makas employees got text messages saying they had been fired.
Akkan and her former colleagues have been protesting at the factory gate ever since. In a solidarity tent at the site they try to draw attention to their precarious situation. Their persistence yielded partial results: in January they finally received back pay and won corrections that removed “Code 22” — “other reasons” — from their termination records. Employees dismissed under that code are ineligible for unemployment or severance pay. Ex-staff are still fighting for severance.
“I worked here for over three years,” Akkan says. “Now we’re being treated like beggars, even though we’re just asking for what we’re entitled to.”
Buse Kara, the group’s spokesperson, was among those fired in October. Shortly afterwards she faced an investigation for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and spent 16 days under house arrest before returning to the protest front line.
Kara describes a workplace of harassment and intense pressure to raise productivity. The company reportedly limited toilet breaks to five minutes and prayer breaks to 10, and workers were told they couldn’t see a nurse unless they were passed out or “writhing in pain.” Sik Makas denied the accusations in response to requests for comment, saying its actions complied with Turkish law and labor regulations.
Founded in 1939, Sik Makas is among Turkey’s 500 largest industrial firms. The company says it exports about 20 million denim items a year, mainly to Europe, producing for brands such as H&M, Jack & Jones, Levi’s, Only and Zara, and selling its own Cross Jeans label in countries including Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Still, Turkey’s runaway inflation and high interest rates have squeezed producers. Like many rivals, Sik Makas has moved some operations to Egypt, where production costs are lower.
Textiles and clothing have long been a pillar of the Turkish economy and a livelihood for hundreds of thousands. Official figures put employment in the sector at around 1.1 million, but unions say that excludes many refugees, women and children working off the books.
Mehmet Turkmen, leader of the BIRTEK-SEN union, says jobs in the industry are almost all at minimum wage, leaving monthly incomes below the poverty line for a family of four (€650, $776). Unpaid overtime and holiday shifts are common. He criticizes companies relocating to rural areas to exploit government incentives and higher local unemployment, which allows employers to push wages down further.
The sector’s decline is stark in raw numbers: 380,000 jobs lost over three years and 4,500 companies closed in 2025 alone. The most worrying shifts are in Turkey’s biggest market, the EU single market, where Turkish exports have collapsed while imports from China and Bangladesh have soared.
According to the Istanbul Textile and Raw Materials Exporters Association (ITHIB), EU imports from China rose 21.8% between January and May 2025 and imports from Bangladesh rose 17.9% in the same period, while imports from Turkey fell 5.1%. Of the EU’s 10 largest suppliers, only Turkey and Tunisia lost market share. With more than 60% of Turkish clothing production headed to the EU, such losses are existential: 2025 was the first year in 30 that Turkey’s share of the EU clothing and textile market fell below 5%, and the first time in 35 years that its global market share dropped below 3%.
Seref Fayat, head of apparel and ready-wear assembly at the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB), warns of a bleak outlook as long as the government intervenes to prop up the lira. President Erdogan has pledged higher state subsidies — 3,500 lira per worker (about €69) — and measures to freeze layoffs and encourage hiring, but employers say this falls far short.
“We have hit bottom. Our strength has run out,” says Mustafa Pasahan, vice president of the Istanbul Apparel Exporters Association (IHKIB). ITHIB chair Jak Eskinazi is even more critical of the government’s course: “We no longer expect anything from them. We’re just trying to save ourselves.”
This article was originally published in German.
