Metin Yeğin wrote about Kazova occupied factory in Özgür Gündem

This week I want to write about a very different topic, about fashion.

Last Saturday, workers of the occupied Kazova Factory exhibited their own products in a fashion show. The stage was good, the lighting system not too bad and there were models and very famous artists. An eye catching performance was put up by models wearing not only pullovers not permeated with bosses but also "essential" accessories of our daily life; gas masks and Palestian kaffiyeh. The 'socialist fashion', as some papers described it, was indeed very crowded. Occupied Kazova Factory fashion show, just like all other fashion shows, have presented this year's models; Occupy, Resist, Produce...

The occupation is witnessing a two sided progress.

On one hand, workers have started to produce pullovers, as must be done in an occupied factory. An occupation can never last unless you produce. In other words, unless you bring bread home. To ensure this, workers are establishing a cooperation which is however not restricted only to workers involved in the occupation, it is also inviting other textile workers from other factories and the unemployed textile workers to join the occupation and the occupied factory. Nor is it restricting its production to textile alone. 'Join the occupation, resist and produce' it says as a solution for crisis in all sectors...

On the other hand, workers are addressing to the Minister of Labour. “Dear Minister, - they say - we want you to publicize the management of this factory by its workers, just like your government has so far saved banks and made decisions to help companies overcome the crisis. It was not we, the workers, but you who is responsible for the economic policies that caused this factory to go bankrupt. However it is we, the workers, who are paying the consequences of the bankruptcy. Why? We will not allow anyone to seize the bread and butter of our families and children. In line with the work safety principle of 12 September's fascist Constitution and the charter of basic social rights, we are calling on you to hand over the factory to us, some 500 workers who want to maintain their life with honor instead of being unemployed”.

Workers have at the same time decided to open a coffee house in the occupied factory, as well as a 'cooperative classroom' where they will be able to take unpaid lessons, and a 'cooperative salesroom' where they will be selling not only their own products but also those of cooperatives, communes and small villages across Turkey. They have a big space and a big heart. When you visit the occupied factory, you will see not only pullovers but also walnuts of Hakkari's villages, the meat of goats owned by villagers facing the risk of being submerged by a dam in Varto, cheeses and yoghurts of Gewer communes, turkeys of the Loc valley in Kastamonu and the tea of Kemalpaia in Hopa.

We have reclaimed the capitalist word- “fashion show”- from capitalists. This year's fashion has been on show last Saturday. Now, the site will be reconstructed by workers all together. Teachers will give lessons in a classroom, pedagogues will work at children's nursery, unemployed textile workers and everyone else...

If they have their shopping malls, we have our occupied factory.

This year, fashion means: Occupy, Resist and Produce...