Speaking on the controversy, Ordu Chamber of Agriculture President Necat Avcu said terrorism and the Southeast were two different concepts. Both Avcı and Giresun Chamber of Commerce President Özer Akbaşlı said they will be relying on the labor of southeasterners in the harvest season this year, as in previous years. Akbaşlı said this year’s yields are low, and for this reason orchard owners will not be recruiting more than 2,500 people. However, any other claim about the lower number of workers that will be needed this summer bears no relation to the truth. He said: “There has not been a single meeting where such a proposal was taken up or such a decision made. The rumors that workers from Georgia instead of the Southeast will be hired are only unmeasured talk in coffeehouses or here and there.”
Avcı said that orchard owners lived in the same conditions as their workers and lived in the same residential areas. He said he was upset that the national press even paid lip service to the rumor. “Could such a thing be? We need those workers, and those brothers of ours need jobs. We come to a mutual understanding and work together. There is absolutely no sense in proposing to bring in workers from Georgia. Is it easy to have foreign workers work for you? For 15 years, we have established a social closeness with our seasonal workers. There are people who came here as babies with their mothers and now work gathering nuts and contributing to their families’ budgets. We know each other; there is nothing that separates us.”
Avcı said separatist terrorism, which has been going on for decades, has failed to reach its target of emotionally distancing Turks and Kurds. “Some people with ill intentions are using these rumors to serve somebody’s purpose. But they will fail. Neither we nor our worker brothers will fall into this trap. Our Kurdish brothers are as weary of terrorism as the rest of the country. Actually, the seasonal workers have helped build a bridge between us and develop mutual understanding.” Avcı and Akbaşlı say that their seasonal workers will be greeted with a pleasant surprise this year. As opposed to previous years, those who come to the area without a prior contract with the orchard they work for will not stay in tents and hard conditions.
The chamber presidents said the seasonal workers will be placed in residential complexes with prober piping, hot water and even cinema rooms. Those who have prior contracts, as is the usual practice, are placed in the same building as their employer.
Akbaşlı said the places the workers would be placed are usually not any different from the residence of the employer during the harvest season. He said if the employer has set up a tent in the orchard, the workers stay with the employer. If the employer continues to reside in his or her house, then they provide a story of their house for seasonal workers’ accommodation. He also said they would continue to bring more workers from the Southeast to prove that the ugly allegations of racism are untrue, adding they were committed to transforming the relationship between employers and seasonal workers to friendship.
In years of higher yields, the Black Sea region receives as many as 60,000 seasonal workers from the Southeast. However, this figure will remain at about 10,000 due to lower yields this year.
