New Anatolian, Turkey
Jan 26 2007

Kamu-Sen: Blaming Trabzon is simplistic

The New Anatolian / Ankara
26 January 2007

While Black Sea locals now stand accused of the premeditated murder
of a prominent journalist, a major union said yesterday it would be a
mistake to blame the violence associated with the region on
unemployment alone.

The Turkish Public Workers’ Labor Union (Kamu-Sen) said that the
effects of migration must also be considered an important factor.

Trabzon, a major city in the region, and the Black Sea region have
been at the focus of news stories since last year when Andrea
Santoro, a Catholic priest, was assassinated by a teenager in
Trabzon, and a crowd tried to lynch members of the Association of
Solidarity with the Families of Prisoners (TAYAD). Last week, most
recently, finally journalist Hrant Dink was murdered by a teenager
from Trabzon, according to accounts of his confession.

Kamu-Sen head Bircan Akyildiz said that he has been following news
stories anxiously and that it is wrong to present unemployment as the
sole factor behind Dink’s murder.

An OECD report released this week also said that Turkey has too many
young people at loose ends. In Turkey, the percentage of "inactive
youth" is 47.5 percent for women and around 25 percent for men.

Akyildiz underlined that unemployment is not a problem only in the
Black Sea region but it is a "bleeding wound" across the country. He
also explained that mass migration is another important factor
affecting the region.

Meanwhile, Turkish Employer Unions Association (TISK) Chair Tugrul
Kudatgobilik urged the government to solve Turkey’s unemployment
problem, stressing that more than 800,000 people in the country are
looking for a job.