LMT #142: Saraçhane Square, Istanbul, Turkey – Görkem Akgöz

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Görkem Akgöz
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam

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On March 19, 2025, yet another stunning blow was dealt to Turkish democracy with the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the opposition mayor of Istanbul and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s most prominent rival. In response, Saraçhane Square became the epicenter of resistance, its historic plaza in front of the city’s municipal hall transforming into a vibrant agora, a testament to a city refusing to be silenced.

Commentators hailed the massive 2025 crowds as the birth of the “Second Saraçhane Spirit.” For many, the “first” was the jubilant gathering celebrating the mayor’s 2019 election victory. But the square’s memory runs far deeper. While the “new” spirit of the 2020s responded to a perceived judicial coup, the original “Saraçhane Spirit” was actually born sixty-four years earlier in 1961, in the wake of a military one. For decades, a spectre of popular dissent had haunted the square.

To understand how this single plaza became the recurring arena for such pivotal moments, one must first understand the space itself: a square not gently evolved, but violently carved out of the city’s heart decades earlier.

In the 1950s, the old Saraçhane district was radically reshaped by an aggressive modernization campaign. This was spearheaded by the era’s dominant government, which championed a pro-business and staunchly pro-American agenda. Following these new urban plans, a wide, modern artery was bulldozed through the dense historic neighborhood. In the process, centuries of Ottoman heritage—including the small mosques, fountains, and workshops that gave the area its name—were wiped from the map. In their place emerged the vast, open, and imposing square we see today, dominated by the new, modernist Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality building. The plaza was designed by the state to be a symbol of an emerging order. The public, however, would soon claim it for a very different purpose: a formidable arena for dissent.

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That new purpose began to be realized on December 31, 1961, when an immense crowd—estimated between 100,000 and 200,000 people—flooded the square for the largest labor rally the nation had ever seen. Such a massive demonstration did not emerge from a vacuum; it was the culmination of a decade of silent, explosive growth as Turkey rapidly industrialized.

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This emerging social class was empowered by the freer political atmosphere that followed the 1960 military coup, an event that, in a twist of historical irony, overthrew and executed the very same prime minister whose government had created the modern Saraçhane Square. The coup led to the liberal 1961 Constitution, approved by referendum just months earlier. The constitution presented workers with a compelling paradox: for the first time, it recognized the principle of the right to strike. However, an old Labor Law from 1936, which explicitly banned all strikes, was still in effect and directly contradicted the new constitution. With the government offering no clear timeline to resolve this conflict, workers feared their new right would remain trapped between a constitutional promise and a legal ban. The Saraçhane rally was their attempt to force the issue and break the deadlock.

This determination to force the government’s hand stemmed from two potent forces: a deep-seated fear and a fresh political ambition. The fear was that this “once-in-a-century opportunity” would be lost; unionists distrusted the civilian politicians who were about to take power, believing they would use the legal limbo to delay the laws indefinitely. The ambition belonged to the nascent Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), founded months earlier by the same union leaders, who saw the protest as a chance to prove the strength of the movement they represented.

As the unionists prepared to demonstrate this strength, the state resisted fiercely. The Governor of Istanbul, a former general, tried to ban the rally, mocking the workers: “Instead of feet walking, heads should be thinking. It serves no purpose other than blocking traffic.” He sarcastically suggested that if they simply wanted to walk, they should “take a walk to Çamlıca Hill,” a well-known recreational park far from the city’s political center. His arrogance backfired, uniting the workers in anger and strengthening their resolve until the rally was finally permitted to proceed.

The profound frustration and hope of a rising class finally found its voice on the last day of 1961, echoing across a muddy Saraçhane Square packed with a determined crowd. The voices from the stage formed a collective chorus of workers finding their power. There were words of hope from an old unionist: “The seeds we planted in the dark days have sprouted… The sun may be denied, but your power can no longer be denied.” There was a clear definition of the struggle: “Where there is a right to strike, there is democracy. Outside of this, there is no democracy.” There was raw anger at the bosses who squeezed workers “like a lemon and threw them away like pulp,” and a defiant ultimatum: “Either the strike law will be passed, or we will strike despite the ban.”

The day’s climax came when the same Governor who had mocked them made a surprise appearance. As he took the stage, some in the crowd shouted his own words back at him: “To Çamlıca Hill!” But facing the immense, disciplined crowd, his tone had changed. “Heroic Turkish workers,” he began, “this country will rise on your calloused hands… Your cause is our cause. I am proud of you.” In that moment, the state, which had tried to ban and ridicule them, was forced to praise them on their own stage, a stunning reversal that demonstrated the undeniable power of the crowd.

The rally’s impact was immediate and profound. Its discipline and peacefulness defied the establishment’s fears of chaos. The protest powerfully countered the official narrative, promoted by the Minister of Labor at the time, Bülent Ecevit, a man who would later become one of the most important figures of Turkish social democracy. In Ecevit’s paternalistic view, workers’ rights were a “gift” bestowed from above, positioning the working class as a passive recipient of the state’s benevolence. Directly challenging this top-down narrative, Mehmet Ali Aybar, who would soon become the leader of the Workers’ Party (TİP), offered a striking counter-metaphor. The change, he argued, was not an external gift but an internal transformation. For him, it was the moment that “the laborers had awakened as if from a century-long sleep,” a latent spirit finally taking physical form, not to be handed a gift, but to claim its own inherent strength.

This awakening had concrete results. The threat to strike was not a bluff; the rally became the “signal flare” for a wave of effective, albeit still illegal, strikes. This sustained pressure from below ultimately forced the government’s hand: on July 24, 1963, Turkey’s first comprehensive labor laws, fully legalizing the right to strike and collective bargaining, were officially published. The energy of Saraçhane also revived the fledgling TİP, giving it the momentum to enter Parliament in 1965 and proving that street power could be translated into political power.

The rally’s cultural echo proved just as potent. In a poignant twist of history, just months before the March 2025 protests, Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu himself inaugurated a photo exhibition of the 1961 rally in the exact same municipality building. In a stark example of how this chapter of workers’ history had been erased from the city’s official memory, İmamoğlu confessed he was learning of this monumental 1961 event for the very first time. Yet, while the state may have erased the rally from official history its legacy proved too powerful to be completely suppressed. Decades earlier, its spirit had already reached Turkey’s most famous poet, the exiled communist Nazım Hikmet, who immortalized that day in his iconic poem, “Greetings to the Turkish Working Class,” with a hopeful vision of the future: “…greetings to those who are marching to create the future days!”

^{The currently imprisoned Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, visiting the “1961 Saraçhane Workers’ Rally” exhibition in January 2024. (Source: https://filashaber.com/amp/haber/cumhuriyet-tarihinin-ilk-kitlesel-mitingine-ozel-sergi-42185.html)}

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TO LEARN MORE:

Koçak, M. Hakan and Aziz Çelik. “Türkiye İşçi Sınıfının Ayağa Kalktığı Gün: Saraçhane Mitingi” (The Day the Turkish Working Class Rose Up: The Saraçhane Rally). Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, Sayı 9, 2009.

Zürcher, Erik J. Turkey: A Modern History. I.B. Tauris, 2017. (Provides a comprehensive historical context for the political turmoil of the 1950s and the 1960 coup).

Ahmad, Feroz. The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950-1975. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1977. (A classic academic study focusing on the period, with detailed analysis of social and political forces, including the labor movement).

Film: Kavel (2018), a documentary directed by Zafer Aydın that details the historic 1963 strike that followed the Saraçhane rally.

Poem & Music: Nazım Hikmet, “Türkiye İşçi Sınıfına Selam” (Greetings to the Turkish Working Class, 1962). The poem, written in exile after being inspired by the rally, was famously set to music by Timur Selçuk. You can listen to the iconic song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN7HimmS0e0

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Cover image credit: Saraçhane Rally, December 31, 1961 (İsmail Topkar Archive)

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