May 14, 2014

At a coal mine near the town of Soma in Manisa province, 274 miners have reportedly been killed so far and about 120 others are still trapped underground after a fire of unknown origin broke out on May 13. Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said this disaster could potentially become the worst in Turkey’s history, signaling that the number of deaths could possibly pass the 1992 mine gas explosion that killed 263 miners near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency reported that 3,000 miners have been killed and more than 100,000 wounded in work accidents since 1941 in Turkey. The Turkish Statistical Institute also shows in its last report that the most common labor accidents occur in mines and quarries. These accidents are mainly linked to poor safety conditions and improper inspection mechanisms.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, said in a press briefing after visiting the accident zone on May 14 that the Soma mine had received a pass in March on security and health regulations. “Let’s please not pretend such incidents do not occur in mines,” Erdogan said. “These are ordinary developments. There is something like labor accidents in literature. This is part of the nature of this business.”

Erdogan also listed a number of high casualty mine accidents in the late 19th and early 20th century in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan. “In England, 204 miners died after a landslide in 1862, 361 miners died in 1866 and 290 miners died after an explosion in 1894,” Erdogan said. “The most deadly mine accident occurred in France in 1906 where 1,099 miners died. More recently, 687 miners died in Japan in 1914. In China, 1,549 miners died after a mixture of gas and coal poisoned them in 1942. Again in China, 684 miners died in 1960. And a mine gas explosion resulted in the death of 458 miners in Japan in 1963. … In the United States, too, which has the most advanced technology, 361 miners died in 1907."

While Erdogan also announced that a judicial investigation into the Soma tragedy has already started, his approach to consider these accidents as being ordinary and referring to some accidents from the past received mix reactions. Some eventful protests have taken place in Istanbul and Ankara. Yet, this is not the first time Erdogan expressed this opinion. He also said in May 2010, after a mine explosion that killed 30 miners in Zonguldak, “Death is the fate of miners” — provoking many on social media to rally against Erdogan.