In this mining town about 75 miles northeast of the Aegean port city of Izmir, thousands of residents work in the region’s coal mines, magnifying the scale of the disaster. Public discontent has swelled as the victims’ families have demanded answers from the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr. Erdogan was forced to take refuge at a supermarket during his visit here on Wednesday after angry crowds scuffled with the police and called the prime minister a murderer and a thief. Turkish newspapers published a photograph on Thursday of one of Mr. Erdogan’s aides kicking a protester who was being held on the ground by police special forces during the protests.

The aide, Yusuf Yerkel, later apologized for failing to “restrain myself despite all the provocations, insults and attacks I was subjected to,” according to the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency.

The privatization of mines had led to a sharp increase in accidents “because profit is always more valuable than miners’ lives in the private sector,” said Umar Karatepe, a spokesman for the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey. He said protests would continue until the energy minister, Taner Yildiz, resigned and the government attended to the miners’ immediate concerns.