Migrant workers are part of the working class, our struggle is united with migrant women and the LGBTQ+ community! We want a world without borders, classes, exile and exploitation!

Migrant workers are part of the working class, our struggle is united with migrant women and the LGBTQ+ community!

We want a world without borders, classes, exile and exploitation!

Following the signing of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families on 18 December 1990, the United Nations declared 18 December as International Migrants' Day. This date is celebrated every year with various actions and demonstrations to draw attention to the exploitation, violence and rights violations experienced by migrants and to raise public opinion and to commemorate the migrants who have been harmed, subjected to violence and murdered.

We know that capitalism, imperialism and the patriarchy further precarise the working class and turn them into migrants, making them more vulnerable to labour exploitation, workplace homicides and male violence.

The murder of three Syrian construction workers in the Güzelbahçe district of Izmir two years ago and the murder of Vezir Mohammad Nourtani from Afghanistan in an illegal mine in Zonguldak on 10 November are examples of the systematised massacres of workers and migrants. The bosses, who become even more reckless when it comes to migrants, are protected with impunity; the lives of workers and migrants are devalued day by day, and even their funerals are not respected. We know that it is not a coincidence that the application pending before the Constitutional Court on Nadira Kadirova, a migrant woman worker who was murdered in the house of AKP MP Şirin Ünal four years ago, was rejected on 29 May 2023, one day after the presidential election; the legal process is now being taken to the ECHR. The case of Dina, a Gabonese university student whose lifeless body was found in the Filyos Stream in Karabük, is being rapidly closed. We see the male violence behind the suspicious deaths of migrant women, we know that this violence becomes layered when racism and patriarchy are combined, and the struggle to reach real justice continues with the efforts of the Feminists for Dina case follow-up group. More than fifteen years have passed since the death of Festus Okey, who was murdered by police violence and torture at the Beyoğlu police station, but the case is still ongoing, and the accused police officer is rewarded with impunity.

In this system where inequalities, poverty, climate crisis, violence and exploitation are increasing day by day and the global imperialist system is the cause, migrant movements are increasing. Millions of people who move for a humane and dignified life, for equal access to resources, for the right to secure and non-exploitative work, for survival, are subjected to the inhumane conditions of states and capital in the places where they arrive, and are employed in the most dangerous jobs in the sectors where exploitation is the most intense with the greed for profit. Women workers, especially in domestic work, are subjected to male violence, their passports are confiscated and they are forced to work long working hours and harsh conditions that they cannot object to. Migrant LGBTIQ+ persons cannot access their most basic rights such as health and housing, and are subjected to homophobic and transphobic attacks.

The Turkish state continues to be reckless in protecting the bosses who exploit migrants for profit and does not fulfil its obligations. It does not protect the rights of migrant workers, does not inspect workplaces and turns a blind eye to the murder of migrant workers. This situation causes migrants to embark on unsafe and dangerous migration routes, to risk death by being forced by human traffickers, to die at sea, and if by any chance they survive, they are taken to GGMs as a result of pushbacks and are subjected to torture and ill-treatment there.

As We Want to Live Together Initiative, we say that migrant workers are part of the working class and our struggle with migrant women / LGBTIQ+ are united. We do not accept the exploitation of migrants by states, patriarchy and capital, the exposure of migrants to racism, male violence and the murder of migrants in labour murders. We raise solidarity against hostility and racism towards migrants.

We know, the world is enough for all of us!

We will continue to struggle for a world without borders, classes, exile and exploitation!

We Want to Live Together Initiative