| ISTANBUL
- Eight o' clock in the morning in the Kagithane neighbourhood,
outskirts of Istanbul, on the European side of the Bosporus.
The streets are filled with mud and holes. The sky is
a roof of smog. We see the workers of the factories
of Sanayi Mahallesi, an industrial area with many textile
factories.
The eyes of Ozcan Babat, 12 years old, are sleepy but
his three older brothers drag him with them to the entrance
of a factory called Bermuda: an ugly building with three
stores, occupying between 250 and 350 people, according
to the season.
Ozcan should be going to school; according to the Turkish
law and also to the international labour convention
on the work of minors (which forbids the work of children
younger than 14). And according to his face. Instead,
Ozcan enters the factory each morning at 8. "Since
a year I come to work here with my brothers. I work
illegal, my rothers are hired legally. They pay me 22
million Turkish lire. There is no social security whatsoever,
no social bennefits. They pay me cash, once a week,
a quarter of the total. I am happy. I don't complain.
What I do? I aw long trousers. Which brand? Benetton
of course. We all make garments for Benetton".
The questions raise suspicion with the brothers of Ozcn.
In the end there is just time left to make some pictures.
Then the four, three youngsters and a child, dissapear.
Mehmet Kocak is 11 years old. He also starts at eight
in the morning and leaves at half past six in he evening.
These days Bermuda is working on the orders of Benetton
for the spring of '99. Or better, there is a flow of
orders from Bogazici Hazir Giyim, the company that manages
the orders for Benetton in Turkey, garment with the
brandname Benetton, made with cloth that is send in
directly from Italy.
In the past months Benetton held two worldwide publicity
campaigns. One centers on children with a handicap.
The other - with the multi-ethnicity of the United Colors
of Benetton - is about he 50th anniversary of the declarations
on human rights from the United Nations and the convention
on the rights of the child. Article 23 of this convention
states: "Undersigned acknowledge the right of children
to be protected against economic exploitaton and the
execution of labour that is dangerous or conflicts with
the right on education." These concepts are miles
away from the daily reality of a child like Mehmet Kocac.
He also works for Bermuda since a year. "I hold
the trousers of Benetton while an adult worker operates
a sewing machines on the sides. If I like this? Mmmm...
I sure don't like studying." He tells this a few
minutes before he starts his shift. For 132.000 (Italian)
lire a month, Mehmet is a piece in the long chain, from
subcontractor to subcontractor, that produces garment
that is sold at a much higher price than their wage.
In the 012 store owned by Benetton, specialised in clothes
for children, in the center of the same Istanbul where
Mehmet works, the cost of a wintersweater is 38 million
turkish lire. To buy this, Mehmet and the other 25 to
30 children younger than 14 working at Bermuda, have
to work one and a half month.
Like Mehmet and Ozcan, Ercan Yildirim is a childworker
from Turkish Kurdistan. He is 13 years old and during
a workbreak, after lunch, he starts playing in one of
the buildings of Bermuda. If a stranger approaches him
and asks him if he works for Bermuda, a gatekeeper comes
out of the building who threatens: "leave these
premises, we have orders not to let anybody near."
And the administrator, who thinks that we are business
people instead of journalists, says "we have an
agreement with Bogazici that forbids entrance to anybody
without permision. It's to protect the privacy of the
Italian company."
Bogazici Hazir Giyim and Benetton are strongly connected.
The entrance of Bogazici - that has Italian shareholders
- has a big Benetton sign. And the operators answer
the phones with just one word: "Benetton".
But to back up the heavy charges brought up by Turkish
unions, the accounts of the children collected outside
the factory in Bermuda are not sufficient. To prove
the accusations one must personally enter the Bermuda
factory, one of Benettons primary subcontractors in
Turkey, and see the children at work, photograph them,
and have a statement of the chairperson of the factory.
Find labels of Benetton on the clothes that are made
inside.
To get inside the factory, two journalists, one from
Italy and the other from Turkey, had to act as an Italian
garment industrialist and his Turkish interpretator.
The Italian journalist works for the newspaper Corriere.
The Turkish journalist, Ali Isingor, is the author of
a research on the Turkish maffia. He made the pictures
supporting this article. The incognito journalists told
the owner of the Bermuda factory, Ilyas Aruzade, that
they were looking for documentation about the machinepark
of the factory in order to confince their company to
relocate production to Turkey, to this factory.
After some hesitation, Haruzade agreed. Enabeling Ali
Isingor to take pictures in the factory, while the journalist
of Corriere della Sera discussed fabrics and the posibility
to have qualitycontrolers visit the factory. "It
is all possible", Harunzade said, "Benetton,
or Bogazagi, they are the same, sends its own quality
controlers every other two or three days."
A lot of children that were interviewed and photographed
at the entrance of the factory, at the beginning or
ending of their shift, we saw working inside now. Smiling,
in their blue working outfit, that made them look older.
The working conditions are reasonably good. But for
the working children, their childhood passes making
clothes for Benetton, because they need the money or
because they are Kurdish refugees from the civil war,
the most vulnerable of the 12 million inhabitants of
the metropole between East and West.
This Benetton production-chain consists of the mother
company in Italy and Bogazagi that places the orders
in Turkey at Bermuda and several other large factories.
In addition to this Bogazagi has 24 to 30 small workshops
producing for it. At the company Gorkem Spor Giyim,
the owner Yusuf Eskenzai shows a Benetton-hat that one
of his employees just finished. And a sweater for children.
Eskenzai explains to the journalist who acts as a garment
industrialist: "We produce for Benetton. Five thousand,
ten thousand, how many they want, what they want. We
cut fabrics by hand and sew the clothes here or at other
workshops working for me." A part of the garments
go to Italy. A part stays in Turkey or goes to the Turkish
speaking parts of the ex-Soviet Union. On all labels
it says: "Made in Italy".
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