'Graduation Cups' in the Air for Potato Workers

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Posta Newspaper, 5 November 2017)


It may not be Harvard, but the feeling is the same.

In Nevşehir, on their last day of work seasonal potato field workers
threw their collection buckets into the air yesterday in celebration,
much like their university-age counterparts do with their caps at
graduation.  The workers come to Nevşehir to work from primarily
Şanlıurfa province and from other areas of east and southeast Turkey.

The workers toil from sunrise to sunset, about 15 hours, under the hot
sun, for meager wages - 35-40 TL (about $10-12) - and then retire to
tents with no electricity or water.  There are more than 3 million
seasonal workers in Turkey and nearly 1 million of these are children. (!)