Vol. 81/No. 28 July 31, 2017
Turkish gov’t obstructs trial of bosses in 2014
mine explosion
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan — then Turkey’s prime minister — spoke in Soma after the company-caused disaster, he said the risk of death is simply the fate in life of miners. “These accidents are things which are always happening,” he said.
Under pressure from the protests and international attention, government prosecutors brought charges against the mine owner and company executives for “causing death by negligence.” The prosecutors announced they were seeking life imprisonment for Can Gurkan, the owner, and seven other mine bosses, as well as two to 15 years in prison for 29 others.
But now the fight to hold the bosses accountable faces a new obstacle. Following a failed coup attempt in July 2016 — which the Erdogan government blamed on followers of his former ally Fetullah Gullen, who has been in exile in the U.S. — a state of emergency and rounds of far-reaching purges and arrests were imposed to consolidate Erdogan’s sweeping executive power. The judiciary has been a special target.
One month after the failed coup, Gurkan seized the opportunity to claim terrorism was the cause of the mine disaster. “Our country has been under attack of PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party], DHKP-C [Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front], and FETO [Fetullahist Terror Organization, Erdogan’s term for the followers of Gullen],” he told the court. “They must have done the Soma incident, too.”
“The judge had gone into the Soma mine and did a lot of investigations,” Ali Sogut, a former coal miner who worked at Soma Holding’s Ata Bacasi mine, told the Militant by phone July 17. “The judge asked the prosecutor if he was ready for the sentence. They were going to sentence the mine officials to 15 or more years in prison.
“Then the prosecutor asked for the sentencing to be postponed. The judge was threatened by the company lawyers,” Sogut said. “Then he was removed from the case and transferred to Izmir. The state and the company work hand in hand.”
In a July 12 article “Victims of Soma Disaster Still Wait for Justice,” the Hurriyet Daily News said, “The system that sacrificed people for more profit and exploited workers had given no value to their safety. … This should probably be defined as murder, rather than an accident.”
Rumors spread that the judge in the case, Aytac Balli, was being investigated and then was gone. “Discharging the only person ‘competent’ in the case from his duty?” the Daily News asked. “Make families say, ‘Give back the judge.’”
Turkish Minute, a news website, reported July 4 that 780 more judges and prosecutors had been removed by the Erdogan government, including Balli, “who was about to give the final verdict in the Soma trial.” They noted that the “government has removed thousands of judges and prosecutors from their posts on coup charges since the failed coup.”
One-quarter of all judges and prosecutors in Turkey have been dismissed over the last year, and over 2,000 arrested.
A public appeal was issued by 301 artists, politicians and journalists on behalf of the “301 workers who lost their lives,” reported the Daily News, demanding a fair trial and protesting the judge’s removal.
Miners in the Soma mining district continue to face unsafe conditions from bosses determined to boost profits at all costs. Those working at the Imbat mine refused to work after Ismail Karakaya, 44, was killed in a coal-breaking machine in January. “They told us [about Karakaya’s death] and we said we did not want to go down to the mine,” one miner told the daily BirGun. “Our job is very intense and dangerous. They do not provide training either. … When they don’t take the required precautions, the outcome is this.”
Yasemin Aydinoglu contributed to this article.
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