Learn Turkish: Müdür, işçileri yıldırmak ve susturmak pahasına sansür uyguladı. - The manager applied censorship at the cost of intimidating and silencing the workers.

The postposition pahasına means "at the cost of" or "at the risk of." When used with verbs, it follows the -mAk infinitive form directly, without needing any case endings like the dative or ablative. Here, it applies to both infinitives connected by ve, creating the phrase "at the cost of intimidating and silencing."

Both yıldırmak and susturmak end in similar causative suffixes. What are their root verbs?

They come from the roots yılmak (to be daunted / to give up) and susmak (to be quiet). Adding the causative suffixes -dır and -tur changes them to yıldırmak (to cause to be daunted / to intimidate) and susturmak (to cause to be quiet / to silence). This is a great example of how you can build advanced verbs from basic roots.

Why is işçileri in the accusative case here?

It serves as the definite direct object of the actions yıldırmak and susturmak. In Turkish, even when verbs are turned into infinitives (as they are here to be paired with pahasına), they still govern objects and take case endings exactly as they would if they were the main conjugated verb of the sentence.

Could we just use a single verb for "censored" instead of the phrase sansür uyguladı?