Challenging Democratic Deficit at Work Through Humoristic Criticism: Perspectives from Turkey’s Highly Qualified Employees

3.1 The Role of Reflexivity in Highly Qualified Work

In administrative texts related to social policies and in evaluations by international organizations (such as the OECD), highly skilled work that was initially introduced has later been widely used, particularly in migration studies, in the context of the migration of highly qualified employees. I propose extending the use of this concept to the field of the sociology of work as well. Additionally, the fact that no Turkey-specific term has been developed in the social sciences literature to describe these employees – likely because Turkey only transitioned into a wage-earner society in the early 21st century (Yılmaz Deniz 2017) – makes the effort to conceptualize these wage earners particularly significant.

The definition of highly qualified employees can be framed in reference to the OECD’s (2001) classification, which defines highly skilled work as occupations requiring specialized knowledge and skills in a particular field, typically verified by a higher education diploma. Additionally, the ILO’s (2012) skill levels classification highlights the ability to apply factual, technical, and methodological knowledge to complex tasks within a given expertise. High-level literacy, numeracy, and advanced communication skills are also considered key components of highly skilled work Moreover, the ability to solve complex problems in a specific field is categorized as very high qualification, encompassing the capacity to analyze and present complex documents, engage in decision-making, exercise creativity, and demonstrate advanced problem-solving skills.

When analyzing the conflict between democracy and work, the work experiences of highly qualified employees in Turkey provide a crucial perspective. This is particularly relevant in a society that is becoming increasingly authoritarian and where labor rights are more restricted compared to advanced capitalist societies. This article argues that the conflict between democracy and work is most clearly visible in the experiences of highly qualified employees. As such, the focus on this specific group is a methodological choice, aimed at capturing the nuances of this conflict in a context where workplace democracy is highly constrained. In the Turkish context, highly qualified employees find themselves at the intersection of economic pressures and political constraints. While they are expected to demonstrate high levels of expertise, autonomy, and initiative, their work environments are often structured in ways that limit their participation in decision-making processes. The contradiction between the neoliberal discourse of empowerment and the reality of hierarchical, undemocratic workplace structures is central to their experiences, making them a key group for understanding the broader work-democracy conflict.

My primary aim here is to emphasize that the qualities highlighted in the definition of highly qualified are fundamentally related to critical thinking, and professional and intellectual competence, which position the employees as a self-reflective subject. Although the flexible production model of post-1980 corporations sought to instrumentalize this subjectivity for economic purposes, it is important to acknowledge that the emerging workforce also gained, or at least had the potential to gain, this reflexivity. If we intend to understand the working conditions and experiences of these employees, we must place their distinct capacity for self-reflection at the center of our analysis. In this sense, while the mobilization of subjectivity at work through the post-1980 management strategies may pose a risk of new forms of alienation (Renault 2006), it simultaneously offers them the opportunity to engage in philosophical reflection on their own conditions and experiences (‘sich philosophieren’) (Negt 2007). In other words, the competencies developed to become a highly qualified worker can, as observed in this study, provide individuals with a genuinely critical perspective and self-reflexivity.

3.2 Highly Qualified Employees in Turkey’s Late Industrialization Context

Due to Turkey’s late industrialization, the proportion of wage earners in the total workforce only surpassed 50 % in the early 2000s. Within this wage-earning workforce, employment has been concentrated in the service sector, which has expanded since the 1980s. Since the early 1980s, highly qualified employees – distinguished by their salaries, benefits, social prestige, and spatial differentiation within urban areas – have also fueled debates in Turkish social sciences regarding the emergence of a new middle class (Kurtuluş 2011; Neyzi 1973; Öncü 1997; Rutz and Balkan 2009). However, by the 2000s, the conditions of highly qualified employees began to shift significantly. The 2001 economic crisis led to mass layoffs, particularly in the banking sector, and since the 2008 global financial crisis, the economic conditions of highly qualified employees have progressively deteriorated. Objective data support the increasingly negative subjective experiences of work. According to the OECD Better Life Index, Turkey ranks among the lowest in terms of work-life balance, largely due to its weekly working hours exceeding the OECD average. The extreme blurring of boundaries between work and leisure inevitably has a significant impact on the relationship between democracy and work in terms of reduced participation in civic life and the erosion of labor rights.

The 2008 financial crisis marked a significant turning point in the work experiences of highly qualified employees in Turkey. They were particularly vulnerable to layoffs because the privileged position they had enjoyed up until that point had a critical downside: the absence or severe limitation of union rights and the lack of class consciousness. Although unionization efforts in certain professional groups yielded some results in later years, union rights remained highly restricted overall. This limitation led highly qualified employees to seek alternative forms of organization, primarily through social media and blog-based networks. These platforms served two main purposes: first, to allow workers to share their negative work experiences among themselves, and second, to publicize these experiences and engage in deliberation (Yılmaz Deniz 2022).

The deterioration of working conditions for highly qualified employees in Turkey during the 2000s coincided with the country’s broader trajectory of de-democratization, which intensified after 2010. This political and social shift had particularly striking consequences for highly qualified employees. Their attempts to organize via social media in response to worsening workplace conditions also became spaces where demands for democracy were articulated. Being both a worker in their professional life and a citizen in society meant experiencing democracy’s decline in a dual sense (Yılmaz Deniz 2022).

In recent years, migration sociology research has highlighted a significant increase in highly qualified migration from Turkey to Europe, with findings suggesting that this trend is strongly linked to experiences of de-democratization (Danış 2023; Orhan 2023). Many highly qualified professionals who have emigrated in the past decade have done so in search of better living and working conditions in European countries. The desire for a better quality of life often includes expectations such as equality and justice, freedom from discrimination based on political views, access to welfare state benefits, more equitable and high-quality education opportunities, and the possibility of living in a democratic society. Similarly, the pursuit of better working conditions is shaped by expectations such as achieving work-life balance, having longer paid leave, knowing they will not receive work-related emails or phone calls outside of office hours, and benefiting from stronger labor protections. This trend underscores how the erosion of workplace democracy and wider democratic decline have increasingly driven highly qualified employees to seek alternative futures beyond Turkey’s borders.

The pandemic experience, combined with Turkey’s specific socioeconomic conditions, has further deteriorated the already fragile work-life balance for highly qualified employees (Eşici et al. 2024). The post-pandemic global economic crisis, coupled with Turkey’s rapidly rising inflation rates since 2021, has exacerbated the living conditions of this group. For many highly qualified employees, the pandemic served as a turning point, prompting them to reassess their lifestyles and consider significant life changes. One notable response to this shift has been the migration of highly qualified employees from Istanbul, where they are most concentrated, to smaller cities and towns. While the option to work remotely has been the primary factor enabling this movement, many have also been driven by the expectation that leaving the metropolis for coastal or rural areas will offer a more humane and sustainable way of life. This process has triggered a reverse migration trend, where employees relocate to nature-rich coastal regions and small towns in search of a better quality of life.

However, highly qualified employees’ responses to their worsening living conditions are not limited to geographic relocation. The deterioration of economic conditions – central to the focus of this article has increasingly led this group to seek public avenues to express their work experiences and frustrations. In this context, the emergence of social media accounts dedicated to critiquing workplace conditions reflects a growing need for public articulation of these experiences. My field research examines the origins and discourses of these social media accounts, situating them within this broader socioeconomic landscape.

3.3 Highly Qualified Employees’ Democratic Criticism

The factors shaping the work experiences of highly qualified employees are not limited to the objective conditions discussed above. This article focuses particularly on the management strategies and the broader context of de-democratization, both of which restrict employees from expressing their authentic self in the workplace. However, it is also important to emphasize that objective conditions – rising inflation, increasing debt burdens, and job insecurity – further intensify the difficulty of expressing subjectivity at work.

At this point, I will analyze negative work experiences that contribute to an undemocratic work environment along two intersecting axes.

The first axis concerns corporate management strategies, which instrumentalize employees’ subjectivity to create the illusion of a democratic workplace while failing to fulfill this promise. The expectation that employees demonstrate creativity, take initiative, transition from a duty ethic to an admiration ethic (Voswinkel 2007) – that is, to exceed job requirements by adding a personal touch to their work – and make unique contributions is central to this corporate culture. However, the limits of these subjective contributions are ultimately dictated by whether they align with corporate profit interests. This boundary also marks the exclusion of democratic values and practices in the workplace. I argue that the connection between negative work experiences and the lack of workplace democracy is particularly significant in the Turkish context. My field research data reveal how employees articulate democratic demands through their work experiences.

The second axis relates to the rise of de-democratization in Turkey since 2010, which has manifested most clearly through restrictions on freedom of expression. This has made the paradox of corporate management strategies even more pronounced, reinforcing undemocratic labor relations. In other words, the constraints on free expression in society have heightened employees’ awareness of their inability to express themselves as subjects in the workplace. Additionally, another facet of de-democratization – arbitrariness, where legal procedures are violated at will – has led to managers arbitrarily infringing on workers’ rights. In this sense, I argue that the workplace has become a crystallized site of broader societal de-democratization.

As a result, employees are subjected to a double democracy deficit – both as individuals in society and as workers in the workplace. This makes it particularly urgent to critically examine work in an authoritarian society, where democratic erosion in political life is directly mirrored in workplace relations.

However, one may ask: If this issue affects all wage earners, why focus specifically on highly qualified employees? For instance, don’t industrial workers also operate under similarly authoritarian conditions? Addressing this question requires clarifying why I prioritize lived experiences as an analytical lens – because not all worker groups experience the same objective conditions in the same subjective way.

The key distinction lies in unionization and labor rights. While highly restricted, workers still have some degree of organizational capacity and union protections (Birelma 2025). In contrast, highly qualified employees remain largely excluded from comprehensive union rights, which pushes them toward alternative forms of organization. Additionally, their intellectual capacity and heightened reflexivity make them more sensitive to negative experiences at work (included undemocratic working conditions) from which they suffer (Yılmaz Deniz 2022). The mobilization of subjectivity at work imposed on them also differentiate their experiences from those of industrial workers, leaving them more exposed to psychosocial risks in the face of de-democratization.

Thus, I argue that the social media accounts examined in my research field emerge from highly qualified employees’ capacity for philosophical reflection on their own conditions. These platforms serve as a space where they articulate their experiences and critically engage with their deteriorating working conditions.

4.1 The Overlap of De-democratization and Negative Work Experiences

The core finding of this research is that the conflict between democracy and work manifests in Turkey as an overlap between de-democratization and negative work experiences, particularly in the context of highly qualified employees. The most prominent instance of this overlapping is exemplified in the post shared by the PlazaKafası account, which visually merges real-life footage of Turkish politicians with office environments. This content has since been shared by other similar accounts, reinforcing the connection between political and workplace authoritarianism.

In this post, PlazaKafası share a video edit in which politicians are placed into an office meeting setting. Around a conference table, the seats are filled with video clips of politicians, their gestures and speech synchronized with the corporate environment. At the head of the table sits the current President, whose speech to newly appointed district governors in 2023 is overlaid onto the scene:

[…] I expect you to dedicate yourselves to your work with a pace and motivation that will have you running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

The choice to include this speech is highly significant. It deliberates the long working hours and lack of work-life balance that highly qualified employees endure by aligning their workplace struggles with the language of political authority. The authoritative figure at the head of the table represents both the country’s political leadership and the corporate managerial class, suggesting a parallel between the rhetoric of political control and corporate demands on employees.

This discourse also underscores the erosion of legal protections, particularly in labor law. By positioning the President’s speech in a workplace setting, the content highlights the arbitrary transgression of legal labor rights and exposes how employees are not recognized as legal subjects (Honneth 2000). In this way, the workplace becomes a microcosm of broader political authoritarianism, where employees experience both political and workplace de-democratization simultaneously. In the second row of seats around the meeting table, a video clip of the President’s son has been placed. In this clip, he appears silent, with his hands clasped and head bowed, while an ‘Intern’ badge is placed in front of him. This character represents someone who is generally voiceless and without agency. The choice to position this particular clip in the second row is likely related to his public perception as someone who follows in his father’s footsteps and does not act independently of him. This visual placement further emphasizes hierarchical obedience, drawing a parallel between workplace dynamics and political power structures.

In the third seat, there is a video excerpt of a female opposition party leader from a February 2024 party group meeting. In this clip, she plays a folk poet’s (Karacaoğlan) song on her phone while visibly emotional, tearfully stating, ‘Something has to change’, in reference to the miners who lost their lives in a gold mine collapse in Erzincan. This moment is particularly striking in the workplace setting, as it contrasts genuine emotional response and ethical concern with the detached corporate culture where labor struggles are often dismissed.

The fourth seat is occupied by a video clip from the 2023 handover ceremony of Turkey’s newly appointed Economy Minister. In this scene, the former minister hands a bouquet of flowers to his successor, saying, ‘Welcome. May God help you.’ The use of this scene in the post can be interpreted as a manifestation of the struggle employees face against unfavorable working conditions.

At the fifth seat, there is a scene from a TikTok video published in 2023 featuring a former mayor of an Istanbul district – who later ran several times for metropolitan mayor and is currently serving as a member of parliament from the main opposition party – in a conversation with a young man. On the table in the image, the words ‘Human Resources’ are written in front of the politician. In this scene, the young man says, ‘Sir, I want to eat a donut,’ and the former mayor responds angrily, ‘My son, what do you mean by donut? Don’t let your lack of sense keep you from even eating the root of it. God knows you even go to Starbucks.’ When the young man replies, ‘I’m going, sir,’ the former mayor retorts, ‘Brother, what’s with your adoration for Starbucks? Are you sick? Go to Kahve Dünyası,’ while physically pushing him.

The choice to use this clip in the post can be interpreted of how highly qualified employees experience a lack of democracy as individuals in the society they live in. In the quoted dialogue, there is an extremely hierarchical relationship between the young citizen and the politician. The politician does not acknowledge the citizen’s request, openly disrespects his individual preference, scolds and humiliates him, and even resorts to physical violence. This is not a case of tacit disregard but a clear, deliberate dismissal and punishment of his request. Through this clip, we witness how legal democratic rights are violated – even though this violation has sparked public outcry, the politician was later elected as a member of parliament from the main opposition party. Associating this scene with the work experiences of highly qualified employees deliberates that a similar form of authoritarianism exists in the workplace, constituting a part of their negative work experience.

In the sixth seat, there is a clip of the current mayor of Istanbul from a 2024 television interview conducted before the municipal elections. In this clip, while responding to journalists’ questions and criticizing the ruling party, the mayor repeatedly states: ‘This doesn’t concern me. This doesn’t concern me, too. This doesn’t concern me at all.’ The inclusion of this phrase in the post can be interpreted as a critique of workplace managers who refuse to take responsibility for negative situations or events they are accountable for. By repurposing this political statement within a corporate setting, the post draws a parallel between political evasion of responsibility and managerial indifference to employees’ struggles.

In the seventh seat, there is a clip from 2014 featuring the leader of a party that was in opposition before 2018 but is now part of the ruling bloc. In this speech, the politician addresses an audience and says: ‘With the belief that you will accomplish this, I salute you all with love and respect.’ However, the key phrase here is ‘all of you’ (alayınızı), which in Turkish can be used in a derogatory or even profane manner in certain expressions. At the time, the phrasing caused amusement because the politician paused mid-sentence, momentarily creating the impression that he was about to swear, only to then redirect the sentence into a respectful greeting. The deliberate use of a ten-year-old political clip in this post demonstrates that these video selections are carefully curated to reflect the experiences and critiques of highly qualified employees. The purpose of including this clip seems not simply to highlight the politician’s words but to draw attention to the implied profanity, mirroring employees’ frustration with their working conditions. In this context, the brief pause in the politician’s speech symbolizes the hesitation of employees, who, despite feeling anger or frustration toward their work environment, ultimately self-censor and refrain from expressing their true sentiments. The post uses humor to articulate employees’ silent but deeply felt reactions, highlighting the gap between what they wish to say and what they are allowed to express in the workplace.

In the eighth and final seat, there is a clip of the former leader of the main opposition party from the 2023 presidential elections. After previously claiming he would win outright in the first round, he failed to secure a victory and remained silent following the results. In response to growing media and public criticism over his lack of reaction, he later released a video from his home, where he slammed his hand on the table and declared ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ In the visual edit, a résumé is attached to the section of the table where the politician is seated. This modification symbolically aligns the politician’s frustrated outburst with the experience of unemployment, where job seekers often feel unseen and ignored. The phrase ‘I’m here’ thus becomes a sharp response to being overlooked and erased, reflecting the struggles of those facing job insecurity and economic precarity. This carefully curated content demonstrates how labor relations and politics are deeply intertwined, as political figures and workplace settings are merged within the same narrative framework. By placing political leaders within an office environment, the edit visually conveys how authoritarian discourse and practices directly influence workplace dynamics.

Thus, the findings in this research field reveal that while in a democratic society, work is often seen as excluded from democratic values and practices, in an undemocratic society, authoritarian values and practices inevitably permeate the world of work. This is because undemocratic conditions align with and reinforce the demands of capital, making workplaces a reflection of broader political authoritarianism.

So, what negative work experiences arise from the undemocratic practices that highly qualified employees expose in their workplaces – particularly as they link these issues to broader political dynamics? My analysis in this field demonstrates that highly qualified employees working in corporate companies use humorous narratives to critique four key areas: Psycho-social risks, Corporate culture, Co-worker relationships, Indebtness.

4.2 Undemocratic Working Conditions as Negative Working Experiences