Mizgin Tabu/JINHA

ISTANBUL – Women's exploitation in textile workshops in Turkey is intensifying, according to International Labor Organization (ILO) figures that show that 80 percent of women in the country are condemned to insecure working conditions, 10 percent higher than the world average for women.

Millions of workers in Turkeyare trapped ininsecure and flexible jobs,but the picture is worse for women, who face problems ranging from being fired for being sick to having to treat themselves in the case of workplace accidents. Many, like Gamze Öztürk, 17, were forced to migrate from Kurdistan to work in the basement sweatshops "under the stairs" in Turkey's metropolises.Some of her coworkers were displaced by the war in Rojava and others, like Gamze, by economic conditions in Kurdistan.

Gamzehad to migrate from Mardin province's Kızıltepe District. She reluctantly left school to work in a textile workshop in the Hacı Ahmet neighborhood, in Istanbul's central district of Beyoğlu. She described the problems compounded for Kurdish working women in Istanbul, ranging from the discrimination they face in the street for speaking Kurdish to the inability to get an education. The state, she said, had abandoned her. "They make sure their own children get an education. But Kurdish children are seen fit for death and exploitation."

(cm)