Story of refugee workers in Turkey's textile sector

Many world famous clothing companies have their goods produced by textile houses in Turkey. Brands tell suppliers: "Produce this amount of that product." Suppliers distribute the order to the contracting firms they work with. 

Daily Hürriyet reported last week that some of these firms were using child laborers. Those reports follow stories last year when the BBC revealed child labor at a workshop in Turkey producing goods for H&M. 

But child laborers are not the only issue in textile workshops in Turkey. The illegal hiring of refugees is another. 

On paper, everything looks clean. There is a strict contract between the giant brand that has its clothes produced in Turkey and the supplier. The contract concerns the legal circumstances in workshops where production is made, and all brands are required to ensure that all workshops comply with all legal conditions. 

But illegal or child laborers can still be spotted in these workshops. The workshop management mentality in Turkey rarely complies with such written conditions. Certain brands that know this do not trust suppliers or workshops and monitor workshops themselves. Often, when they raid workshops in their production chain they find several illegal refugees working under adverse conditions. 

Some textile firms claim "there are no illegally hired refugees in our workshops." But this is shown to be untrue when you visit their workshops. If the brand says: "I have given verbal warnings to the supplier, there is no such issue in the workshops that are producing for us," but does not monitor the workshops, it means that it is ignoring this fact even though it knows about it.  

Several responsible brands, when they determine illegally hired refugees in the textile...