As death toll rises in Soma, pressure increases on Erdogan

The death toll in the Soma mining disaster reached 284 people on Friday, with the political pressure on Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan also increasing over what has been seen as a poor handling of the crisis.

Turkish riot police clashed with protesters across the country on Thursday in demonstrations sparked by the disaster, while mining unions held a nationwide strike.

In the western city of Izmir, about 100 kilometres from Soma, police fired tear gas and water cannon at around 20,000 demonstrators.

Turkey's four biggest unions took part in the one-day strike, saying workers' lives had been jeopardised to cut costs and demanding those responsible for the collapse of the coal mine were brought to account.

"Hundreds of our workers have been left to die from the very beginning by being forced to work in cruel production processes to achieve maximum profits," they said in a joint statement, calling on people to wear black.

Anger at the disaster has swept across Turkey, where mine explosions and cave-ins are a frequent occurrence.

In Izmir, the 61-year-old head of one of the main unions, Kani Beko, was hospitalised after violent clashes with riot police.

In Ankara, police fired tear gas and water cannon on around 200 protesters accusing the government and mining industry of negligence.

Kemal Ozkan, assistant general secretary of the international trade union federation IndustriALL Global Union, said the "staggering" number of fatalities made the mining disaster the worst in recent memory.

"Turkey has possibly the worst safety record in terms of mining accidents and explosions in Europe and the third worst in the world," he told AFP in a statement.

He added it was "made all the more tragic by the seemingly uncaring attitude of the government and mining companies".

Electrical fault not the cause

A source inside the Soma mine has claimed that the fire was not caused by electrical fault in power distribution unit as initially thought.

An "unprecedented" fire was behind Tuesday's mining disaster in Turkey's west, said Soma Mining Inc, the owner of the mine in Soma district which has seen the worst mining accident in Turkish history.

In a statement late Thursday, the company described the fire as "inexplicable" from a technical standpoint, and said its reasons would only become clear after a thorough probe.

"Unfortunately, an inexplicable fire that has never been witnessed before took place in our enterprises", it said. "The reasons behind the fact that the fire spread faster than normal conditions, despite all safety measures taken, will be clear after a detailed investigation. ”

Recovery teams expect to reach two previously inaccessible galleries in the Soma coal mine on Friday, officials from the mine in Turkey's western province of Manisa said.

The intensity of the fire which blocked the galleries has now reduced, added officials, although one source said 18 people are likely still trapped inside the mine.

Political fallout

The Erdogan government's handling of disaster has come in for criticism, with a series of public relations gaffes undermining the prime minister's response to the crisis.

Perhaps most notoriously, one of Erdogan's advisors was photographed kicking the relative of a dead miner during a protest. The advisor has been identified as Yusuf Yerkel, a former graduate student at the School of oriental and African Studies in London,

Speaking to Hurriyet Daily News, Yerkel defending his actions saying, "he attacked and insulted me as well as the prime minister. Should I have stayed silent?"

A video has been circulated online that appeared to show Prime Minister Erdogan "punching" a protestor in Soma. In the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News, he was identified as Taner Kuruca, an inhabitant of Soma, who says he was not not a protestor and was slapped "involuntarily" by Erdogan while he was making his way through the crowd.

"I was not one of the protesters," he told the newspaper. "I came face to face with the prime minister. As his bodyguards started to push, the prime minister unfortunately did something involuntarily and slapped me while I was walking backwards, because he was angry at the crowd and he couldn't control himself." 

Erdogan himself has rejected claims of government culpability, saying that "such accidents happen".

He compared the collapse to 19th-century mining disasters, saying that "204 people died in the UK in 1862 and 361 people in 1864", in an apparent attempt to downplay its severity.