A powder keg in Turin. The strike on 30 October could lead to dangerous tensions

Following the looting of sportswear shops on Sunday 18 October, the Milanese square became the focus of media attention. The temporary arrest of Youssef Siher did the rest. However, the streets of Turin arguably deserve equal, if not greater, attention. Protests against the high cost of living along the River Po are intertwined with outright opposition to the defence industry, culminating in a debate on the future of Turin which, as we shall see, has many implications in the run-up to the general strike on 30 October called by the USB, which will serve as a rallying point for all the protests currently taking place across the region. The demonstration is led by students from the Einaudi Campus of the University of Turin, a complex of Futurist architecture designed by none other than Norman Foster. The campus remains occupied and will stay that way at least until the general strike, with the solidarity of a group of lecturers who support the struggle and are actively involved in the scheduled programme of lectures and debates. In the evening, a more relaxed karaoke session takes place.

The occupation was launched to protest against job insecurity and the high cost of living, but there is another crucial aspect to the students’ initiative: the links between the university, industrialists and defence firms such as Leonardo and Thales Alenia. Left-wing student collectives are explicitly calling for the University of Turin to terminate these agreements (which they regard as restricting freedom of research) and, above all, to scrap the framework agreement signed by Vice-Chancellor Cristina Prandi with Confindustria Piemonte for research into dual-use technologies, which the collectives argue can be used in both civilian and military contexts. The aim of the university-industry partnership is to bridge the skills gap and try to retain young talent in the region through the development of projects in artificial intelligence, Industry 5.0 and robotics. This is a boon for a city that is once again anxiously awaiting Stellantis’s production decisions to bring Mirafiori to full capacity. At the time of signing the agreement, the academic authorities were well aware of the debate taking place in Turin and within the university itself, and had included a specific clause in the text referring ‘ethical safeguards’ to the approval of individual projects, whilst immediately ruling out any military purposes. However, neither this ‘construens’ aspect (boosting Turin’s appeal) nor the clause in question is enough for the students, who are inevitably influenced by the controversy dividing the city over the reorientation of the automotive supply chain towards the defence industry. More generally, they share concerns about the alleged transformation of the ‘city of cars’ into a ‘city of weapons’.

The link between protests against the defence industry and local development is a distinctive feature of the situation in Turin and is not found in any of the other hotspots of recent weeks. Even the protests directed against the academic authorities regarding the direction of university research are, for the time being, specific to the Savoy region. One might be tempted to say ‘one of many’, because a ‘Leninist’ organisation as deeply rooted as Askatasuna is also unique. There are social centres in various cities that are formidable and aggressive when they take to the streets, but the experience Askatasuna has built up over the years in clashes with the police, both in the city and, above all, in Val di Susa, is unrivalled. On the 30th, it will probably be business as usual: a peaceful student march will be led up the garden path by the ‘Leninists’, who will break away from the group and attempt to settle scores with the police. The new development of recent days, however, which is set to have an impact and make the scenario described above even more worrying, is that in the past few days, during the high-profile appeal trial concerning the No Tav violence, Deputy Public Prosecutors Giancarlo Avenati Bassi and Manuela Pedrotta have requested that 18 Askatasuna activists be charged with criminal association, seeking sentences totalling 47 years. In March 2025, the judges at first instance had dismissed this charge, convicting the defendants only of minor offences.