When I was laid off from my full-time job and considered other possibilities, one thought stayed with me: a job will be found in the medium term. Something will come up in the short term. In Turkey, unemployment is always on the agenda; it rises and falls but never truly disappears.
I could see and knew the economy was deteriorating. But for someone who had worked in media and civil society organizations, the reality proved far harsher than I had imagined. Shrinking grants and the media sector's own political and financial contraction had deeply affected both fields. I was aware of this; yet I could not fully grasp how it would impact me individually. Knowing a reality and living within that reality are two different things.
The First Task of the Morning: Checking Email
During my job search, I tried every avenue. I submitted countless applications, told friends I was looking for work, and clicked easy-apply buttons on various career platforms. I started with the most well-known approaches. But after some time, I realized I had become something like a ghost in the job market. The vast majority of my applications received no response, and even at places where I had interviews, I had to push repeatedly and ask explicitly just to receive a rejection email.
When I woke up each morning, my first task was to check my emails for news from places I had applied to. Most of the time, there was no response. There is only a harsh process management that says you will be notified only if the answer is "yes."
During the time I was applying for jobs and waiting for results, it did not take long for me to understand how employers operate. By then, I had become adept at deciphering from the brief email preview on my phone's home screen whether the news was negative or positive. High and invisible walls had been built between the unemployed and employers. Advancing past the first stage in an application and reaching the second step is not enough either. At every level, you encounter a similar wall. It is very difficult to see where the process is going. Because each time you jump over one wall, you encounter the next one. And at no stage is there a guarantee that you will receive a response.
I experienced this firsthand: after three different interviews and a task assessment, I had to send two emails and two WhatsApp messages insistently just to force my own rejection response.
I can say that my unemployment passed this way for some time: I received no response to dozens of applications, and in a few cases, I had to persistently send emails and messages just to get a rejection answer. I explained myself repeatedly. I resisted many times to avoid compromising my professionalism. I tried many times to explain my unemployment to my family. I cannot remember how many times I had to explain my unemployment in response to the question "what are you doing," but it was often.
I know this is not just my story. And this story does not have a happy ending. It is not written by one author, but by thousands. Therefore, if you ask someone unemployed in your circle, the rest of the story unfolds in a similar way.
Following these experiences, I began to ask myself: where do the unemployed learn about their own agenda?
There was no answer. Everyone was left alone with their own wall, their own silence. So was I.
Born from my own story and a single question circling in my mind is işsizler.org