After the Journalists Union of Turkey (TGS) signed its first collective agreement in 18 years with the newspaper Cumhuriyet in mid-November 2021, the management dismissed eight journalists and union members on 29 November. TGS believed this to be a discriminatory and retaliatory move against the union organisation.
In response, on 30 November, TGS organised a protest with journalists and press freedom advocates in front of Cumhuriyet’s headquarters in Istanbul at 11 a.m. local time. Although Cumhuriyet put forward economic reasons for the dismissals, the TGS general secretary, Mustafa Kuleli, stressed that this decision showed that the newspaper’s management “continues its anti-union policies”. All affected colleagues were active members of the union.
The dismissed workers were Olcay Büyüktaş Akça chief editor; Sami Gürel, sports manager; Rüya Özkalkan, chief editor; Hilal Köse, Cumhuriyet Sunday manager;
Tuğba Özer, reporter; Ece Piroğlu, reporter; Vedat Arık, photojournalist; and Mahmut Gündüz, archivist.
Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief, Aykut Küçükkaya, said during the protest that the board’s decision was taken without his consent. Calling on the board to retract the decision and reinstate the laid-off employees, Küçükkaya added that he would “continue to support the struggle of the journalists who were fired”.
Cumhuriyet journalists cited the Cumhuriyet Foundation’s chair, Alev Coşkun; its secretary-general, Işık Kansu; and board members Osman Özer and Adnan Arslan as the “architects” of the decision, and called for all four to resign. Aykut Küçükkaya was removed from his post after expressing his support for the dismissed journalists.
The workers’ protest received widespread support, including from the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ). On 6 November, Cumhuriyet announced that the journalists that it dismissed would be reinstated in their jobs and called for “labour peace.”