Reuters/AFP/Soma, Turkey

Turkish police put the mining town of Soma on virtual lockdown yesterday, setting up checkpoints and detaining dozens of people to enforce a ban on protests as Turkey declared rescue operations over following this week’s devastating coalmine blast after retrieving the bodies of two last trapped miners, bringing the final death toll to 301.
“The rescue operation was carried out to completion. There are no miners left underground. All of them have been identified after DNA tests,” Energy Minister Taner Yildiz told reporters in the western town of Soma, site of the country’s worst ever industrial disaster.
“Rescuers scoured all corners of the mine for a last time to make sure everyone had been located, but they have not come across any more bodies,” he said.
The last two bodies were carried out four days after a fire sent carbon monoxide through it.
That brought the death toll to 301, Yildiz said.
A total of 485 miners were rescued alive, he added, pledging support for the stricken families.
A preliminary expert report on the accident, obtained by the Milliyet newspaper, pointed to several safety violations in the mine, including a shortage of carbon monoxide detectors and ceilings made of wood instead of metal.
Hundreds of riot police patrolled the streets while others checked identity cards at three checkpoints on the approach road to Soma, a Reuters witness said.
The local governor banned protests in response to clashes a day earlier between police and several thousand demonstrators.
Eight lawyers from the Contemporary Jurists Association, including its leader, were handcuffed and detained during the lockdown on suspicion that they had gone to the town to take part in more protests, the private Dogan news agency reported.
A total of 36 people were arrested and taken to a sports centre in the town where they chanted: “the pressure cannot intimidate us”, the agency said.
The number of detentions could not immediately be confirmed.
Tuesday’s disaster has triggered protests across Turkey, aimed at mine owners accused of ignoring safety for profit, and at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, seen as too close to industry bosses and insensitive in its response.
Erdogan has presided over a decade of rapid economic growth
but worker safety standards have failed to keep pace, leaving Turkey with one of the world’s worst industrial accident records.
The plant manager denied any negligence at the mine which was inspected by state officials every six months.
Demonstrators clashed with police in the western port city of Izmir overnight, some setting up makeshift barricades and throwing stones and fireworks aimed at the police, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
Some 40 people were detained.
There were also protests in Istanbul. Some residents in the city banged pots and pans from their windows, an act which was a feature of last summer’s nationwide anti-government unrest.
The police intervention in Soma could add to public anger towards Erdogan.
He has survived mass demonstrations and a corruption probe into his government over the past year to remain Turkey’s dominant politician, but now risks alienating conservative, working-class voters that form his party’s base.
There was wide media coverage of footage apparently showing Erdogan slapping a man as locals jeered his entourage when he visited Soma this week.
The man, Taner Kurucan, said Erdogan had slapped him and told Kanal D TV that he was then beaten by the prime minister’s bodyguards.
Erdogan adviser Yalcin Akdogan accused “gang members” of provoking Erdogan’s team as he went to meet mourning families.
Anger was intensified by a photograph of an Erdogan aide kicking a protester held down by police special forces.
A group of students at the Istanbul Technical University occupied the mining faculty on Friday evening in protest at links between the university and the company which operates the mine – Soma Holding, the private Dogan news agency reported.
They said they would continue their protest until various demands were met, including a guarantee that the university’s links with the company were cut and the resignation of an academic there who said those who die from carbon monoxide poisoning “died sweetly”.
He has apologised for his comment.
A university official said it had ended its ties with the owners of Soma Holding, meeting one of the students demands, Dogan reported.
The mining company managers held a fractious news conference on Friday where they said an unexplained build-up of heat was thought to have led part of the mine to collapse, fanning a blaze which spread rapidly more than 2km under the surface.
Erdogan’s opponents blame the government for privatising leases at previously state-controlled mines, turning them over to politically connected businessmen who they say may have skimped on safety to maximise profit.
Questioned on links between Soma Holding executives and Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, a mine executive confirmed his wife was a local AK Party politician.
Company chairman Alp Gurkan said he had never met the prime minister before this week.
The AK Party said the formerly state-run mine at Soma, 480km southwest of Istanbul, had been inspected 11 times over the past five years.
It denied any suggestion of loopholes in mining safety regulations.






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