A critical analysis of work accidents in Turkey

Although work accidents are a serious problem almost everywhere in the world, it is seen that there are proportionally more accidents and deaths in Turkey. This study, which tries to understand why work accidents and related deaths are much more serious in Turkey than in other countries and why they could not be prevented, aims to reveal not only the factors behind work accidents but also the naturalization process that develops afterwards and has an effective role in the increase of work accidents. Since the naturalization of work accidents is the most critical issue in this context, revealing how this process works stands out as the primary goal. For this purpose, CDA developed for the analysis of newspaper news by van Dijk has been determined as the primary analysis method of the study. This primary analysis was supported and enhanced by corpus and thematic analyses and the manipulation model, which is also developed by van Dijk. Analysis of the relevant literature reveals that four important factors, namely the political context, neoliberal policies specific to Turkey, legal problems and trade union issues, play an active role behind work accidents. The following significant findings have been reached as a result of the analyses carried out with the national newspaper news of the 15 most fatal work accidents that took place in Turkey between 01.01.2000 and 31.12.2019. First, the data not only supported the effectiveness of these factors but also revealed that the naturalization of the issue by the dominant power is effective in the functioning of these factors. Naturalization also makes it difficult for work accidents to elicit an effective societal reaction. Secondly, a five-phase naturalization process was discovered, and it was revealed that the fundamental motivation behind this process was the performance-oriented economic mentality. Moreover, it has been observed that legitimacy and ceremonial adoptions and practices (decoupling) play significant roles in this context. At the same time, important findings have been revealed in terms of the anti-performativity and de-naturalization principles of CMS. Finally, it has been understood that the news media in Turkey is divided into two poles: those who reduce work accidents to an isolated incident and those who oppose this reductionist approach. However, with the increasing power of the dominant power, it has been understood that while the approach that reduces the issue to an isolated incident with a reductionist approach and naturalizes the issue becomes more dominant, the opposing view gradually has lost its effectiveness. Although the printed news newspapers are the most appropriate unit of analysis due to the period in which the study focuses, the discourses of the newspapers, which have been used extensively since the mid-2010s, in the social media organs and the reactions of their readers to them are also considered important in terms of understanding how the society and the reader have responded to the issue. Therefore, it is recommended that future studies should consider these organs as well.