The death toll of minors working in Turkey’s vocational training centers, known as MESEM, has risen to nine for the 2023-2024 academic year, raising safety concerns, the Evrensel daily reported.
The Ministry of National Education reported that 336 minors have experienced workplace accidents while participating in MESEM programs over the past year.
MESEM programs are designed to provide students of high school age (14-17) with practical vocational training alongside their academic studies, aiming to prepare them for the workforce in various trades and professions.
Seventeen-year-old Temirhan Önler, who works in an industrial zone through MESEM, said he suffered three workplace accidents in one year and has lost feeling in his fingers as a result.
Another 17-year-old, Taner, recounted, “A metal ball hit my face, and they just put ice on it and sent me back to work.”
“There is no job safety,” Berat, 16, complained. “Accidents happen right before our eyes.”
“We’re less valuable than a machine!” Erol, a 15-year-old worker, said.
Currently, there are 697,000 minors enrolled in MESEM, out of a total of 2 million youngsters who work in Turkey.
The recent deaths have intensified scrutiny over the program, with critics alleging that inadequate safety measures and oversight are contributing to these tragic incidents. There have been calls for a comprehensive review of the program’s implementation and safety protocols to prevent further accidents.
Among the minors who died are 15-year-old Alperen Kocayavuz, who fell from a height, and 16-year-old Eren Dağ, who was fatally electrocuted.
In response to the rising fatalities, Turkey’s Ministry of National Education announced in April that it had terminated contracts with 8,406 businesses, accounting for 10 percent of all companies involved, that failed to meet occupational health and safety standards.
Since the announcement, the ministry has not provided further updates on workplace safety measures. It remains unclear what actions, if any, have been taken against the businesses where minors have died while working.
Critics have also pointed out that some student contracts include clauses that place legal liability for workplace accidents on the students and their parents, raising concerns about accountability and protection for young workers.
Özgür Müftüoğlu, an academic studying labor economics, described the death of minors at MESEM as organized crime. “The situation of these minors is similar to the exploitation of prisoners for cheap labor,” he said. “These are child slaves, not workers.”
People have been suffering from lax work safety standards for decades in Turkey, where workplace accidents are nearly a daily occurrence. The Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG) reported nearly 2,000 work-related deaths in 2023.
According to the group, more than 30,000 occupational accidents have taken place since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in November 2002.
İSİG General Coordinator Murat Çakır had earlier said the reason for the record number of fatalities in work-related accidents has to do with the policies of the AKP, which he said aim to turn Turkey into a source of cheap labor for Europe.
According to Çakır, workers feel obliged to work under unsafe conditions fearing that they will become jobless and unable to support their families.
İSİG began to record occupational fatalities in 2011. The platform also records the number of workers who died due to the lack of work safety in past years in addition to campaigning for stricter measures to maintain safety in workplaces.
A yearly report by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on labor rights reveals that Turkey is one of the 10 worst countries in the world for working people. According to the Brussels-based ITUC, workers’ freedoms and rights continued to be relentlessly denied with police crackdowns on protests in Turkey in 2023.
