The Minotaur of Child Exploitation: MESEM

Osman Çaklı

Turkey’s capitalist production relations continue, with unrelenting appetite, to turn child labor into a systematic tool of exploitation. While the Vocational Education Center Program (MESEM) claims to provide vocational and technical training even outside of formal education, in reality it functions less as a place of learning and more as a mechanism to fill capital’s shortage of cheap labor with the hands of children. This system, driven by the state, puts children’s lives at risk to meet the low-cost labor demands of large industrial capital (and not only industry—agriculture and the service sector are also links in this chain). Though the theory claims otherwise, the practice reveals this as the simple truth. Especially from Diyarbakır to Van, from Urfa to Antep—throughout much of Anatolia and Mesopotamia—poverty and the devastation wrought by war push children into the grinding gears of factories at an early age. The data and statements from the Child Rights Center (FISA), the United Metal Workers’ Union (Birleşik Metal-İş), and the Occupational Health and Safety Assembly (İSİG) expose this tragedy in stark detail, yet it still fails to dominate the public agenda. From what we see and know, MESEM has effectively become the domicile of child deaths and rights violations.

FISA’s reports clearly reveal how MESEM systematically violates children’s rights. According to FISA’s “Child’s Right to Life Violations” report for January–June 2024, in just six months 343 children died from preventable causes. A significant number of these deaths were directly linked to workplace fatalities.

Rising child labor and workplace deaths in Turkey

In FISA’s report on MESEM students’ (apprentices’) access to rights, it is emphasized that children are denied the right to unionize, are exploited with low wages, and are made to work in dangerous jobs with inadequate safety measures (the debate over children’s right to unionize is itself a separate subject).

One example: the death of 14-year-old Eyüp Can Güner, which FISA says was not “negligence” but the result of a systemic approach that industrializes children. FISA describes MESEM as “apprenticeship as child exploitation,” stressing that children are deprived of the right to education and that their labor is seized by employers. These violations are even more acute for the children of Kurdish families displaced from rural Anatolia by war and poverty. The cycle of deprivation makes MESEM appear as a “salvation,” but in truth, the road it offers leads straight to the grave.

The United Metal Workers’ Union directly labels MESEM as “child labor exploitation.” In its meetings with the ILO, the union has drawn attention to the rise of child labor and workplace fatalities in Turkey. With the slogan “Children are not workers! Shut down the MESEM project,” the union recalled the workplace death of 14-year-old Arda Tonbul, stressing that the system is legalizing and expanding child labor under the cover of regulation. In a statement for June 12—World Day Against Child Labor—the union asked: “What business does a 14-year-old have in a factory?” and noted that MESEM places children in the metal sector to operate dangerous machinery. At factories where the union is organized, the slogans “Shut down MESEMs! End child labor!” are shouted during protests, symbolizing the labor movement’s resistance to capital’s hunger for cheap labor.

The union states that MESEM allows employers to hire children for less than minimum wage, providing bosses with “zero cost” labor. Among war-torn families of Mesopotamia, this exploitation is even harsher. Migrant children, driven by the need to contribute to family income, are confined to factories from an early age. In Anatolia, small children are either sent to the fields or put to work nearby so their “hands will get used to labor.” The children of this geography are forced to grow up before they can live their childhoods.

The number of unregistered workers reaches 3.5 million

Data from the Occupational Health and Safety Assembly (İSİG) makes the deadly consequences of MESEM tangible. In the first four months of 2025, at least 611 workers died; in April alone, 8 of the 152 deaths were children, 3 of them aged 14 or under. Over the past decade, at least 742 child workers have died in workplace accidents; in 2024, this number reached 71. MESEM-related deaths are rising: in Manisa, 14-year-old Muammer Samet Karaoluk lost his life while working on electrical installations without proper safety measures.

The Assembly points out that child labor is deepened by poverty and migration. In Van, there are about 4,000 MESEM students; in Diyarbakır, between 25,000 and 30,000—children of families who have lost hope in education. The number of registered child workers is approaching 1.5 million, while unregistered child workers number around 3.5 million. Out of 22 million children in Turkey, 10 million live below the poverty line. Combined with the displacement caused by war in the Kurdish regions, this reality turns children into sacrifices for capital. Just as children are run over by armored vehicles, those crushed in factories are also part of the same system. This problem is inherent to capitalism’s structure. Yet the issue must be addressed not in abstract terms, but with concrete data. This, too, is the hallmark of the government’s political economy.

MESEM represents the rawest form of capitalist labor exploitation: the state funnels billions from the Unemployment Insurance Fund into the hands of employers, driving down the cost of child labor. A recent article in Evrensel newspaper revealed that billions of lira in tax debt owed by Koç Holding were erased. This is neither new nor unique to Koç Holding—it is a feature of the relationship between capital and political power. The agricultural children of Anatolia and the migrant families of Mesopotamia are crushed in this cycle.

The labor movement, along with organizations like FISA, the United Metal Workers’ Union, and İSİG, are fighting against this exploitation; but it is not enough. Eradicating child labor at its roots requires public policies that eliminate poverty—policies as vital as bread and water: the right to education, union freedoms, and oversight of capital. So that no more Arda, Eyüp, or Eren will die.

The pedagogy of the oppressed

Closing down MESEMs is one option; however, in the current situation, simply saying “shut them down” risks falling into rote sloganeering. As long as the necessity of work exists in daily life, outright prohibition—while the ultimate goal—could push children into another kind of darkness. Considering that 1 in every 4 children is neither in education nor employment, it would be naïve not to foresee the risks of gang involvement and criminalization. This is why developing alternative policies is critically important.

It is at this point that the voice of Paulo Freire resonates: the pedagogy of the oppressed defines education not as “banking” deposits of information, but as the planting of seeds of freedom. Yet in MESEM, those seeds are crushed into the concrete floors of factories. A child born in an Anatolian village—whether named Mehmet or Fatma—grows in the winds of Mesopotamia, their dreams branching upward like a tree toward the sky. But the system turns that child into a cog in a machine at an early age. As Freire said, the “banking model” of education makes the child a passive storage unit, filled and emptied only with the skills that employers need.

The truth is clear: education should not force the oppressed to speak the language of the oppressor; it should open the door for them to transform the world in their own words.

Capital replaces folk songs with factory sirens

Picture this story: in the narrow streets of Diyarbakır, a 13-year-old Kurdish child enrolls in MESEM and tells his family, “I’ll learn at school, then I’ll become someone important.” But in reality, his hands are scarred and his back bent in a metal workshop—just like the peasants Freire described in Brazil, spinning endlessly in the gears of exploitation. This child experiences what Freire called “cultural invasion”: capital erases his cultural roots—Mesopotamia’s millennia-old stories, Anatolia’s folk songs—and replaces them with factory sirens.

Instead of gaining freedom, children are chained; poverty makes them slaves to capital. Capitalism, as Freire critiqued, rejects dialogue; it replaces the teacher–student relationship with a boss–apprentice hierarchy. The war wounds of Mesopotamia deepen this exploitation; migrant families, seeing no alternative, fall into the trap presented as “education.” Yet Freire offers hope: the oppressed must rise with awareness. The cries of the unions, the reports of FISA, the data of İSİG—these are the seeds of that uprising. The pain of Ardalar, Eyüpler, Erenler, and Alperenler must sweep like a metaphorical storm: children should run in free plains, not toil in dark mines.

Child exploitation is not only the theft of labor; it is also the product of a system that dynamites the very process of becoming human. This mechanism destroys their psychological and social development and deepens social inequalities.