Funerals go on as miners’ families fume
SOMA, Turkey — With passportsized photographs of their loved ones fastened to their chests, family members of men killed in Turkey’s worst mining accident shuffled toward the cemetery yesterday, in a mourning ritual repeated for hours.
At least 30 miners were buried, as gravediggers toiled to make room for the bodies of men still trapped underground.
Two days after a suspected explosion sparked a fire in the Soma coal mine, the town was wracked with grief over the 284 deaths confirmed so far, with frustration at the slow pace of recovering bodies and with anger at government officials who seemed incapable of offering comfort or answers.
Eight more bodies were retrieved yesterday, with at least 140 miners thought to be still trapped. Officials and mine workers said there is little chance that the remaining men, stuck in chambers deep underground, have survived.
Yesterday, five labor unions called for a one-day nationwide strike, demanding better health and safety standards for miners. They also said that mine inspectors should be drawn from labor unions and include independent experts not employed by the mining corporations.
The mine at Soma was formerly state-run but was privatized almost a decade ago.
Public discontent has swelled as the victims’ families have demanded answers from the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan was forced to take refuge at a supermarket during his visit to the town on Wednesday, after angry crowds scuffled with the police and called him a murderer and a thief. Turkish newspapers published a photo yesterday of one of 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.
Mine workers have harshly criticized the Soma mining company since the accident, accusing it of lax safety standards. In a statement yesterday, the company said it had been a model for worker safety, and that the mine had been inspected every six months. The last inspection was in March, the company said.
Late yesterday, a miner at the Soma facility said rescue workers had partially suppressed the fire that had been blocking access to several chambers in the mine, allowing for the removal of two bodies. It was unclear whether they were added to the official death toll.
At the entrance to the municipal cemetery in Soma yesterday, with the smell of dead bodies in the air, volunteers passed out Turkish delights and other refreshments to funeral guests, as is customary.
A portion of the cemetery that had been overgrown was hastily prepared to receive the victims, with workers digging the graves in long parallel lines.
Many of the relatives, overwhelmed by grief and the crowds, could manage only the sparest details about the miners’ lives: One had just secured a loan and bought a house, and another was about to retire. The families spoke at greater lengths about the thankless work in the mine, the long hours, the risk and the low wages.
For some, the connections to the victims were too numerous to count.
“All of them are my brothers,” said Halit Yilmaz, 30, who stood near a roundabout near the entrance to the burial plot, so full of people that it resembled a busy town square.
“My family is a mining family, from my grandfather,” he said. “We are a mining community. At the moment, all I can think of is my friends trapped inside.”