There is every indication that the Soma mine disaster could turn out to be the worst in Turkish mining history with as many as 400 dead. Until now, the grim record for deaths in a single mine was 263 in 1992 at a mine in the Black Sea province of Zonguldak. That so many miners could perish in either of these tragedies is a complete scandal. The private company that owns the Soma mine has said that it was inspected as recently as March and certified as safe. Whatever the company may say, Tuesday's horrific events demonstrate clearly that the mine was very far from safe and, indeed, was actually a death trap. Serious issues are raised both about the quality and honesty of official inspection and about the way that the mine has been run. A proper safety and emergency regime would have taken into account the catastrophic failure and explosion of a generator and subsequent fire that appears to have happened in Soma. There should have been efficient backup systems to provide an alternative source of power so that key equipment, not least ventilation systems and the all-important lifts, could still be able to function. It appears that some at least of the miners were equipped with personal oxygen sets to enable them to survive for a short while in a poisonous gas cloud. However, this by itself does not prove that the mine was safely run with effective risk mitigation. Indeed only two weeks ago, opposition politicians raised serious concerns in parliament about the safety at the Soma pit. Their worries had been dismissed out of hand by the government as plain wrong and purely an attempt to foment political trouble. Now the anxious legislators have been proven right and this appalling loss of life could prove an electoral disaster for the government of AK Party premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The municipal elections at the end of March were won by the governing party. The increasingly imperious Erdogan is looking to the August presidential vote, when for the first time Turks will elect their head of state in a direct ballot. The way that his administration handled the accusations about the Soma mine could sully his campaign. Erdogan himself clearly appreciates the danger because he cancelled a trip to Albania to hurry to Soma yesterday. For the moment the focus is on the desperate efforts by locals and AFAD, the national disaster response organization. A spokesman for AFAD, which was set up in 2009 following two devastating earthquakes, indicated that his men probably faced a grim and heart-breaking task recovering bodies rather than the living. At times of such massive calamity, the hearts of all decent people go out to the victims and their families. They deserve to know the truth of what happened, while miners elsewhere in Turkey need to believe that lessons will be learned. Thus an independent inquiry is essential. At the very least it needs to be understood how a mine that was passed as safe could see hundreds of men die in heart-breaking circumstances less than two months later. The problem is that there will be many who will doubt that Erdogan's government, which is ever more intolerant of criticism, would actually permit a proper inquiry into the tragedy for fear of highly embarrassing revelations.
