Overview

⏱️Schedule:  Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle

🌐 Language: English

The distressed look on a pair of jeans might seem like nothing more than a fashion choice. But for thousands of workers, producing that look came with a devastating cost.

As a teenager working in a jeans factory, Abdulhalim “Bego” Demir was exposed to silica dust through denim sandblasting – a technique used to give jeans their worn appearance. He later developed silicosis, a serious occupational lung disease.

But his story did not end with his diagnosis. Bego became part of the workers’ movement against denim sandblasting in Turkey, helping organise a campaign that eventually contributed to the practice being banned. What began as a fight around one dangerous production method led him to a much bigger question: who really pays the price for cheap and disposable fashion?

Since then, his work has expanded into a wider struggle for textile workers’ rights, health, safety, and dignity – including campaigning through the Clean Clothes Campaign and creating Bego Jeans as an attempt to show what a fairer and more transparent alternative can look like.

This lecture is both a personal story and a look inside a global system: how exploitation becomes embedded in the clothes we buy, why individual consumer choices alone cannot solve it, and what can happen when workers, citizens, campaigners, and companies are pushed to act together.

What we'll cover: 

• How denim sandblasting created the distressed-jeans look while exposing workers to deadly silica dust
• How affected workers organised in Turkey – and helped bring about a ban on the practice
• Why the problem goes far beyond sandblasting: the connection between fast, cheap fashion and workers’ health, safety, wages, and power
• How campaigns such as the Clean Clothes Campaign use workers’ voices, public pressure, and collective organising to push brands and institutions to take responsibility
• What a different fashion industry could look like – from resistance and workers’ rights to fairer, safer, and more transparent production

Speaker

Abdulhalim “Bego” Demir

Labour-Rights Activist & Founder of Bego Jeans

Abdulhalim “Bego” Demir is a former denim sandblasting worker, labour-rights activist, and founder of the Clean Clothes Campaign Turkey. After developing silicosis while working in a jeans factory as a teenager, he helped organise the struggle that led to denim sandblasting being banned in Turkey. He has since campaigned internationally for the rights, health, and safety of textile workers. He is also the founder of Bego Jeans, a fashion brand created as a practical example of fairer, more transparent, and environmentally responsible production.