On the fourth day of protests following Imamoglu’s arrest, Turkish police used pepper spray and rubber bullets against protesters once again.
Mustafa Kemal Güllüoğlu is 63 years old. He officially retired a decade ago, but he still works six days a week in an Istanbul textile workshop just to survive.
His retirement dreams were simple: reading books, visiting museums, and resting. Instead, soaring rent and his wife’s healthcare needs forced him back to the sewing machine despite his physical pain.
Today, he doesn’t measure life in hours, but in stitches. He calculates the price of a single cup of coffee by the exact number of garments he has to sew to afford it. Kemal Abi’s story is the harsh reality of being a working-class retiree in Turkey.