The Paradox of "Civil Servant Unionism" in Turkey: Strong Unionism or Dependant Unionism?

Unions are one of the most important actors in labor relations, and union rights are a fundamental human right. These have been discussed in both industrial relations and labor law from the perspective of workers in particular, while mostly neglecting civil servants. However, when compared to the union density rate of workers (14.26% as of July 2022), the union density rate of civil servants is conspicuously higher (72.63% as of July 2022). However, to assess that an effective and strong civil servant unionism exists in Türkiye based solely on this high union density rate would be misleading. Ironically, implementations contrary to individual and collective union freedoms exist behind this high union density rate for civil servants. This contrariety between the union density rate and union freedom forms the basis of this paper. The study first discusses the development of civil servant unionism in Türkiye chronologically and then examines individual and collective union freedoms from the perspective of civil servants. Although de jure union security provisions do exist, the individual and collective union freedoms have sometimes been explicitly violated de facto and sometimes legal provisions per se have bypassed union security.