DIYARBAKIR, Turkey— Nearly 2 million children under the age of 18 work in various industries in Turkey including in the country’s Kurdish southeast where the percentage of child labor is considerably higher than the rest of the country, according to a report from the Turkish union of workers (TGHIS). In sharp contrast to the government’s official data which puts the number of the child laborers at 709,000 people, the report’s findings give a more gruesome picture of the underaged minors who often work in agriculture and household industries “The fact that 56 child workers have died at their workplaces across the country last year is an indicator of the rise of child labor in Turkey,” said Kamuran Tas, director of TGHIS local office in Diyarbakir. “Undoubtedly, the Kurdish cities’ share of the child labor is larger in relation to the population compared to the rest of the country,” he added. Turkey has made a moderate advancement in efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labor over the past decade amending the labor law to provide protections for children working in the arts and commercial advertising, according to a report from the US State Department of Labor. But children in Turkey are vastly engaged in child labor in street work and mobile seasonal work in agriculture with no laws available for their defence. According to the report children in urban areas of Turkey had low or no access to education and other social services, leaving significant numbers at increased risk of exploitation in the worst forms of child labor, the US report said in 2016. The official unemployment rate in Turkey is around 13 percent while the union’s findings show that the actual number of the unemployed is well above 7 million people or nearly 21 percent of the total labor force in the country. “I am 16 but have been working here for the past 3 years,” said Ali Khefar who works at a car repair store in Diyarbakir. “It is a difficult work for us but we have to help our families,” he told Rudaw.
