This book, as stated by its author, originates from her Ph.D. dissertation, but has subsequently been developed so as to expand its scope and incorporate subsequent developments following her fieldwork into the analysis. It is in some respects unique by bringing the processes of social reproduction in a rural-cum-mining environment into the analysis of extractivism. Dr. Çelik’s expertise as a board member of Social Rights Association in Turkey which functioned to improve the social and economic rights of working people also contributed to her evaluation of her field work. The latter in due course enhanced her academic interests beyond labour relations towards exploring patterns of agrarian change in a comparative framework.
It may be beneficial to put the Turkish coal-mining experience in general and the Soma Coal Basin in particular in a comparative framework as they evolved in the context of a radical change in the post-1980 era both in the mode of articulation of the Turkish economy with the world economy and in the nature of state-economy relationship prevalent within the social formation. This gains saliency as the neoliberal transitions have transformed the material basis of social reproduction for the countries of the Global South. However, unlike many Latin American countries where several left-wing governments during the so-called Pink Tide, had been engaged with ‘redistributive extractivism’ so as to finance welfare and employment programmes aimed at reducing poverty, the Turkish experiment of extractivism during the neoliberal transformation especially since the 2000s has had no such counterpart. This contrast is noteworthy as Dr. Çelik reminds its readers, the ‘great neoliberal transformation’ in the countryside of Turkey has been initiated in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis. Thereby, it underlines one of the defining features of the crises in countries such as Turkey, functioning as driving forces of neoliberal transformation.
Nor is it plausible to describe the Turkish experience in terms of ‘resource nationalism,’ again in contrast to Latin American examples where this concept has been used to characterize a state-led development strategy aimed at recalibrating state-market relations in favour of the former, thus setting in motion the exploitation of natural resources, albeit in collaboration with multinational mining capital. No doubt, there is a need for some clarification here since this particular characterization tends to overlook the fact that neoliberalism as the post-1980 form of capitalism is based on the systematic use of state power to put into effect a hegemonic project of the rule of capital which initiated a series of restructurings of both the state and the capital. Nonetheless, the Turkish
If one of the important contributions of the book to the relevant literature on extractivism is to pursue the latter as a development strategy provided that it is analysed through ‘the prism of class struggle’ which, in turn, necessitates a focus on ‘the peculiarities of labour regimes and labour control strategies.’ In this regard, it is important to note that the labour containment strategies put in effect under the akp rule opted for the market as a mechanism to control and weaken the unions as much as possible so as to achieve the political objective of reversing the political as well as economic gains of the labour movement of the pre-1980 era. Dr. Çelik provides a detailed analysis of the composition of the workforce, the patterns of employment and the ways in which the coal production have been increased in the Soma coal basin with due regard to the political dimension, that is, the relations between the government, coal companies, hometown associations and trade unions. In fact, the book also provides information on how things have changed in this regard in the aftermath of the 2014 coal pit disaster which caused the death of 301 miners.
Yet an equally salient another contribution is squaring the circle, so to speak, by identifying the Soma Coal Basin as a fertile ground for the analysis of the relationship between the rural transformation and the increasing appeal of coal mining for the private capital groups. This has been achieved by combining, on the one hand, the analysis of the transformation of rural environment for the tobacco producers in the wake of the privatization and subsequent closure of cigarette factories by Tekel, one of the pioneering sees, dating back to the 1930s, and ‘the rush for coal’ which propelled extractive investments and resulted in a dramatic rise in demand for miners on the other.
In this context, the transformation of former tobacco producers into miners working in coal pits have been accompanied by the informal employment of
Indeed, the richness of these different dimensions of the field work and the quality of their analysis is revealed in different chapters of the book in reference to the gendered patterns of social reproduction and proletarianization with a detailed examination of classes of labour as there evolves changing means of rural livelihood in the context of extractivist accumulation. Hence, the book no doubt makes a refreshing contribution to the class analysis in order to develop a better understanding of different modalities of reproduction of labour, quite often without economic and social security in different historically specific contexts,
Galip L. Yalman
16 April 2024