President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Monday celebrated May Day in a message issued by the Turkish Presidency, one day ahead of the World Labor Day.
In his message, Erdoğan congratulated all workers and laborers who played an important role in Turkey's growth and development.
"We are representatives of a civilization that says 'Pay the wage of a laborer before his sweat dries'," he said, referring to a saying of Prophet Muhammad.
Mentioning the 15 years of efforts exerted by the Turkish government to uphold and reinforce the rights of laborers, Erdoğan vowed to continue to facilitate the solution of all remaining problems to the best of their capacity.
"With no preconditions or prejudices, we have come together with all labor unions and civil society organizations whose real agenda is workers' rights and benefits; we have had discussions and reached agreements. We have taken care not to be of those who instrumentalize workers and laborers, and such a meaningful day as May 1," he said.
President Erdoğan stressed that his government had done everything within its power to enable every member of the nation to benefit from the "added value" generated as Turkey grew richer, adding that they would continue making the same effort.
"We will continue to support every sincere effort to be shown toward the protection of our workers' rights, and will continue to walk arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with our worker and laborer sisters and brothers till the end."
Erdoğan also emphasized that the Turkish government had introduced a large number of programs to decrease the rate of unemployment, adding that Turkey could become richer only when its workers and laborers became richer.
"All workers and laborers of this country are our workers and laborers. May Day, which we declared a national holiday, is also our festival of labor."
