Now that's a pretty brutal headline, but that's what I saw when i was
looking at Naked Capitalism....
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
his post explains how the horrific mine explosion in Western Turkey, which has officially claimed nearly 300 lives as the death count continues to rise, was not an accident but the direct result of privatization and circumvention of safety standards. And unlike the West, where industrial and mining accidents are met with short-term sympathy but little if any real change in working conditions, protests have broken out, not just in the mine town of Soma but also in major cities.
Now i'm not a Turkish area expert. Amongst American's i'm probably a PhD on the Middle East but, honestly i'm just a guy who reads the papers occasionally and had never even heard of this before
http://www.npr.org/...
Officials say at least 282 mine workers have died in the incident in the city of Soma. That figure seems certain to rise, as about 100 people are still missing. The mine explosion is already being called the deadliest industrial disaster in Turkey's history....[ No survivors are expected]
,,,,
Video of Erdogan's visit to Soma shows a mass of people surrounding his official convoy, booing, hitting and kicking the vehicles. A government official, wearing a suit and tie, was reportedly photographed angrily kicking at a man as two soldiers grappled with him on the ground. Turkish media — and Britain's Channel 4 — say the official is Yusuf Yerkel, a senior adviser to Erdogan.
now Erdogan is the guy who was blocking Twitter
http://www.theguardian.com/...
restricted access to Twitter hours after its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, threatened to "root out" the social media network where wiretapped recordings have been leaked, damaging the government's reputation ahead of local elections.
Some users trying to use Twitter were taken to a statement apparently from Turkey's telecommunications regulator (TIB).
The statement cited four court orders as the basis for blocking the site, where some users in recent weeks have posted voice recordings and documents purportedly showing evidence of corruption among Erdoğan's inner circle. It said that action had been taken against Twitter as a "protection measure".
but he's also willing to throw a punch
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
The Dailymail article is interesting, seeing his Top Adviser kicking a protester.
and there was that whole Occupy Istanbul kind of thing last year
2013-2014 saw protests against the perceived authoritarianism of Erdoğan[6] and his policies, starting from a small sit-in in Istanbul in defense of a city park.[98] After the police's intense reaction with tear gas, the protests grew each day that came after. Faced by the largest mass protest in a decade, Erdoğan made this controversial remark in a televised speech: "The police were there yesterday, they are there today, and they will be there tomorrow." After weeks of clashes in the streets of Istanbul, his government first apologized to the protestors[99] and called for a plebiscite, but then brutally cracked down on the peaceful protesters.[100][101]
but on to the thing Yves Smith calls corporate Homicide.
Turkey has possibly the worst safety record in terms of mining accidents and explosions in Europe and the third worst in the world. Since the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed power in 2002, and up to 2011, a 40% increase in work-related accidents has been reported. The death toll from these accidents reached more than 11,000.
Many analysts agree that what lies behind these tragic events is the unregulated and poorly supervised attempts of a corrupt ruling government to push through hasty privatizations and a forced informalization of labour. The Soma mine itself was privatized in 2005. In the heyday of an anti-public sector campaign, the new owners of the plant proudly declared a decline in production costs from the US$120-130 range under the public ownership of State Coal Inc. (TTK) to US$23.80. It was not very long before it became clear that what actually facilitated this ‘miraculous market success’ was the determined evasion of safety standards. On that front, the president of the private company Soma Inc., Mr. Gürkan, was heard boasting, “You can ask ‘what changed in the mine?’ The answer is ‘nothing.’ We simply introduced methods of the private sector only.
Turkish mines are now killing 6 times the number dying in China.
This is a level of death we didn't see in England since 1820.
Like I said, i'm not the biggest expert on Turkey, but I know a bit about Mines.
Dying 4 miles from daylight, choking on Carbon Monoxide, Gasping as your oxygen generator burns at you and crawling in the dark, trying to see in the smoke and fumes.
That's as close to Hell as I can ever imagine.
Seeing the PM punching Protesters? Well that's a real image for the Class wars.