When wages vanish and severance becomes negotiable, “nearshoring” turns into a social liability—not a competitive edge.
In Tokat, central Anatolia, a labour dispute at Şık Makas—an established denim exporter—has become a parable of Turkey’s wider textile crunch: high inflation, high interest rates, and buyers’ relentless price pressure colliding with fragile shop-floor economics.
Workers say pay stopped in mid-2025, prompting strikes in early October and mass dismissals by text message a day later. After months of protests, former employees report receiving back pay in January and securing corrections to their work records to remove “Code 22”, a termination label that can block access to unemployment and severance. Severance pay, however, remains contested—keeping the picket line alive.
Şık Makas’s output is woven into European brand supply chains—exactly the ecosystem Turkey has long sold as a faster-to-market alternative to Asia. Yet even large suppliers are squeezed as costs rise and orders shift to cheaper destinations. Relocating some production to Egypt may protect margins, but it also exports jobs and imports reputational risk—especially when global brands’ names surface at protests.
Turkey’s industry bodies and local press point to a structural slump: steep job losses, thousands of closures, and eroding EU market share. Without a credible cost-and-currency strategy—and stronger enforcement of basic labour entitlements—Turkey’s “near” advantage may keep shrinking, one factory at a time.
