TKP campaigns for nationalisation of mines

Neither Our Country nor Our People Are for Sale!

The Mines Must Be Nationalised

Turkey is among the world’s leading countries in terms of natural resources and mineral diversity. The extraction of these minerals supplies raw materials used in many sectors, from industry and construction to agriculture, energy, and healthcare. Our natural resources and mining activities are of vital importance for the economic independence, development, and prosperity of our people.

Today, our country is dominated by a system called the free market economy, which prioritizes the needs and profitability of capital. Mining, from exploration to extraction and processing, has almost entirely been subjected to the irrationality and lack of planning inherent in the market system. In line with the state-led economic policies adopted by the Republic, state enterprises such as Etibank, Turkish Coal Enterprises, and iron and steel factories—which played a significant role in the development of Turkey’s industrial infrastructure—had been established. These enterprises were sacrificed to market liberalization. They were either fully privatised, dismantled, downsized, or rendered effectively weak and dysfunctional. Mining operations in Turkey were handed over to profit-driven conglomerates, multinational monopolies, and their subcontractors operating in unsafe and unregulated conditions, all of whom disregard human life.

The result is clear: a country whose nature has been devastated and whose resources have been plundered and wasted; miners condemned to misery; workers’ lives sacrificed to cost and profit calculations despite the existence of all necessary scientific knowledge and technical capabilities.

We are faced with a situation in which mining exploration licenses covering more than half of the country’s territory, along with thousands of operating permits and licenses, have been transferred to private capital. This effectively means that our natural wealth has been mortgaged away. Yet mining still accounts for only around 1% of Turkey’s national income. Clearly, mining licenses are being used by capitalists as instruments of rent-seeking. They buy and sell minerals that belong to the people while they are still underground, continuously increasing their wealth. They alter laws and regulations, circumvent them, and in many cases recognize neither law nor rules. Villages, agricultural lands, forests, olive groves, residential areas, historical sites, and natural heritage zones are all subjected to plunder.

The Communist Party of Turkey calls on our people to put an end to this shameless exploitation and to defend our natural resources, our mines, and our labour!

For Turkey’s economic independence, development, and the prosperity of our people, the mines must immediately and without compensation be nationalised!

1. All exploration, extraction, and processing licenses and permits granted to private capital and companies—especially multinational monopolies and large conglomerates—must be canceled without compensation, and all mines and mining facilities must be expropriated.
2. All mining activities must be carried out by the state within the framework of centralized planning. In doing so, the needs of all related sectors must be taken into account, with comprehensive planning aimed at ensuring raw material security, reducing external dependence, and supplying domestic industry with low-cost, high-quality inputs.
3. A mining policy based on scientific data and centered on the efficient use of natural resources in harmony with public health and the environment must be established and effectively implemented. Within this framework, mining regions must be managed according to a holistic planning approach that considers agricultural and industrial production, water resources, forests, and public health in the areas where mining activities take place.
4. Miners’ labor rights and rights to union organization must be guaranteed. Workers must receive complete professional training, and healthy, safe, and dignified working conditions must be created and protected.
5. The practice of merely extracting and exporting valuable minerals as raw materials must end. A planned industrial initiative must be undertaken to transform these resources into finished products and to produce semi-finished and manufactured goods.
6. Instead of a mining industry focused on supplying raw materials to the construction sector through unplanned and poorly regulated operations, a mining industry with high engineering standards and the capacity for value-added production must be established.
7. In mining areas where operations have been completed, closure, rehabilitation, and reclamation activities—including soil restoration and reforestation to return the land to ecological balance—must be made mandatory within the framework of necessary environmental measures and subject to strict oversight.
8. The machinery and equipment used in mining activities must be domestically produced, and research and development efforts must be carried out to develop efficient advanced technologies compatible with public health and environmental protection.
9. The entire process of nationalising mines and mining activities must take place with the active participation and oversight of trade unions organized in the mining sector and professional associations connected to mining activities.