As warmer weather sets in and schools close for the summer, many families in Kurdistan embark on seasonal migration to find work. From various cities, families travel to harvest hazelnuts, onions, potatoes, or to work in greenhouses and drying fields, where they are obliged to live in tents. While facing numerous hardships both in the fields and in their makeshift shelters, the daily wages they receive are far from sufficient to meet their basic needs under today’s inflationary conditions.
Hands, feet, and eyes burn
To avoid traveling far and to work on their own land, agricultural laborers from Riha (Urfa) come to Amed (Diyarbakır) to dry tomatoes, often forced to endure temperatures reaching 47 degrees. In a tomato drying area set up near the city center of Amed, workers spend eight hours a day in the scorching sun, living in tents they set up nearby for nearly three months. Work begins early in the morning: tomatoes are quickly cut in half, salted, and left to dry. After a few days, once they have dried, they are collected and sifted before being prepared for sale.
Throughout this process, workers often cut their hands with knives. To protect themselves, they wrap tape around gloves, while many cannot wear shoes due to the intense heat affecting their feet. Families come together to work and live in tents, with everyone, from children to the elderly, joining the labor in the drying fields. Yet women bear the heaviest burden: while working in the drying area, they also take care of their tents, cook, look after their children, and wash clothes by hand. Despite all their efforts, women say they receive little in return for their labor, either in the tents or in the fields. Still, they endure the hardships in hopes of making the winter months more bearable.
“We are obliged to work,” the women say, summing up the harsh conditions and their relentless labor as they recount how their days unfold.
Economic crisis reduces income
Rahime Işık, who came from Wêranşar (Viranşehir) to work, emphasized that their income decreased compared to previous years. She pointed to the deepening economic crisis and explained that each passing year feels harder than the last.
Işık said: “We clean this place and then lay out the tomatoes. Whatever we do, whatever we earn, it all comes with effort. We wake up at five in the morning and start working, rest during the midday heat, and begin again when it cools down. We are the ones producing these, but because of rising prices we no longer have the income we used to. We are working just to fill our stomachs. Everything has become more expensive; nothing is easy for farmers anymore. This work is extremely difficult; from morning until night you are under the burning sun, and the water never stays cold. People work here together with their children. Everything is so expensive that no matter what we do, the result is the same, everyone else profits, except us.”
No proper return for such hard labor
Remziye Işık described how they work all day in the scorching sun yet receive no return for their labor. She explained that her children work alongside her, enduring the same harsh conditions.
Işık added: “We start at five in the morning and finish at eight in the evening. The heat exhausts us. In the tents we try to get shade, but especially at midday it becomes unbearable. All of our children stay here with us, and they struggle just as much. We work during the day, and at night we protect our children from scorpions. As soon as schools close, we either come here to do this work or go to construction jobs. We work here so we can survive the winter. Despite all this effort, the daily wage we receive is so little that it is not enough for food, drink, or the children. For us, it is very hard and burdensome. This drying field burns every part of us.
Everyone here has come with their children; there are even mothers in their seventies among us. Life has become so difficult that people are forced to work in this heat and these poor conditions just to survive. Everything is simply for survival, for a loaf of bread.”
Forced to work
In the tent where she was staying, Medine Ekinci was washing clothes in a basin placed in front of her. Once the laundry is finished, she will head to the fields to peel tomatoes. She explained that they work everywhere, all the time, yet never receive the return for their labor.
Ekinci said: “Right now I am washing clothes by hand; tea or food must wait, then I go to the field to work. Our hands are always cracked and cut. What can we do? We are forced to work. We burn under this sun just to take care of our children. We suffer from all kinds of problems and illnesses. After resting only two or three hours a day, we start again. We come here because it is close; the other places are farther and even harsher. We endure these hardships so our children can study and not go hungry. Every summer we are forced to work to make a living. Whatever happens, every summer we end up in the fields. We do every kind of job; everything is just to buy a little flour and oil for our home. And the money we earn has no real value.”
Source: ANF News
