A historic strike begins today in Bodrum, the holiday district of Muğla. Tourism workers organised within TOLEYİS, employed at the Hapimag Sea Resort Garden Hotel, will hang strike banners at their workplace today. The workers are demanding that the collective bargaining table, which the employer has overturned, be immediately re-established and that their acquired rights be guaranteed by a collective agreement. 373 workers are starting the strike at the hotel today.
ACCOMMODATION AT THE HOTEL COSTS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF LIRAS
At the hotel, where nightly rates per person reached 20,000 liras last season, booking fees for July this year range from 30,000 to 60,000 liras. Hapimag, a Swiss-based multinational, is a well-known hotel in the region. The union has prepared brochures in German, English and Russian for guests staying at the hotel. The workers have called on holidaymakers here to show solidarity.
Ersin Sancaklı, Chair of the TOLEYİS Marmaris Branch, explained that they had begun the strike with great enthusiasm. Describing how negotiations at the workplace, where they have been organised for 30 years and renew their collective agreement every two years, had reached an impasse, Sancaklı said, “When our agreement expired on 31 December, we applied to the Ministry for authorisation. Upon regaining authorisation, we submitted a draft proposal to the employer on 26 January. Without even looking at the draft we submitted, the employer declared, ‘We will not negotiate,’ and drew up a record of disagreement. Despite our repeated calls for the employer to come to the table, they did not attend. No offer was made during the statutory mediation period either. In the new collective bargaining negotiations that began on 26 January, not a single proposal has been put forward by the employer,” he said. Sancaklı stated that their wage increase demands were based on the inflation rate calculated by the Independent Research Group (ENAG), not the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), but that the employer had effectively walked away from the table without even engaging in negotiations.
THE EMPLOYER’S GOAL IS TO DE-UNIONISE
Highlighting the workplace bullying workers at the hotel have been subjected to, Sancaklı said, “They gathered the workers at the workplace and tried to force them to resign from the union. They said they would dismiss them if they did not resign. Kerem Demirkol, the hotel’s director in Turkey, told the workers that if they insisted on staying in the union, he would outsource the work, bringing in workers from abroad to do the job. When this failed to have the desired effect, he went from department to department engaging in mobbing. Their lawyer, Süleyman Başterzi, said, ‘We’ll give you what the union wants; just resign—there’s no need for the union to secure a pay rise.’ We have lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Labour’s inspectors regarding this matter. The inspectors’ investigation has already been completed; we are now awaiting the report,” he said.
STRIKE DECISION INSPIRED CONFIDENCE
Sancaklı, who stated that workers were initially pressured to resign and forced to leave the union, said the strike decision had reversed the situation. “The strike decision gave the workers confidence. Our members, who had been forced to resign, returned to their unions one by one. As a union, we committed to paying workers 50 per cent more than their wages during the strike and set up a food support scheme. ‘As a union, we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers. The people of Bodrum, associations and political parties are also providing significant support. The fire we have lit will mark a new revival for tourism workers in Bodrum. Our strike will also empower all tourism workers. We want to sit down at the negotiating table immediately to defend the rights of workers, who are always the ones to bear the brunt of every crisis,’ he said.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Sezon tarihi grevle açılacak, published in BirGün newspaper on April 24, 2026.
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