Turkey mine search ends with 301 confirmed victims of fire

The search for victims of this week's coal mine fire in Soma is now over, with a final death toll of 301, Turkish government officials said Saturday.

Authorities believe they have now recovered the bodies of all the workers who were in the Soma mine when the fire erupted Tuesday.

The investigation into what caused the fire continues, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Coordination Directorate said.

The final bodies were pulled out Saturday afternoon, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said.

However, as the recovery effort comes to an end, controversy over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's response to the tragedy refuses to blow over.

On Friday, police in the western city used tear gas, plastic pellets and a water cannon on protesters angry over the government's actions.

Public fury has grown since the mine fire broke out, fueled in part by Erdogan's own missteps while visiting the scene a day later.

First, Erdogan's comments to relatives of dead and injured miners, in which he described the disaster as par for the course in a dangerous business, were seen as highly insensitive and drew scathing criticism.

Then video taken on the same day in Soma showed Erdogan telling a man "don't be nasty," according to the footage aired Friday by Turkish broadcaster DHA. The remarks initially reported and translated by DHA were confirmed by a CNN native Turkish speaker.

"What happened, happened. It is from God... If you boo the country's prime minister, you get slapped," Erdogan is heard saying.

That was after another video clip emerged showing a crowd outside a grocery store angrily booing Erdogan. As the Prime Minister entered the crowded store, he appeared to put his arm around the neck of a man who was later identified as a miner.

After the confrontation, the video captured what appeared to be Erdogan's security guards beating the same man to the floor. The miner said later that Erdogan slapped him, possibly by mistake. He wants an apology for the way he was treated by the Prime Minister's staff.

In addition, a photograph surfaced Wednesday of an aide to Erdogan kicking a protester, an image that quickly became a symbol of the anger felt by many against the government, and amid mounting questions over safety practices at the mine.

Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, dismissed the grocery store incident and said the image of the aide, Yusuf Yerkel, kicking the protester was misleading.

Yerkel was quoted by Turkey's semiofficial Anadolu news agency Thursday as saying that he had been deeply saddened by the previous day's events. "I am sad that I could not keep my calm in the face of all the provocation, insults and attacks that I was subjected to that day," he reportedly said.

Popular anger continues to run high.

On Friday, a throng of protesters chanting "Don't sleep, Soma, remember your dead!" coursed through city streets a few miles from the disaster site, trying to reach a statue honoring miners, before the police responded with tear gas.

Questions over safety chambers

The mine complex exploded in flames for unknown reasons Tuesday -- trapping many miners deep underground.

Among other issues, mine officials indicated Friday that workers may not have had access to an emergency refuge where they could have sheltered from the flames and choking fumes.

Site manager Akin Celik told reporters that the mine had closed one emergency refuge when excavation work moved to a lower area. Miners were building, but had not finished, a new safety chamber at the lower level, he said.

The owner of the company, Alp Gurman, said the mine met the highest standards laid out by the law in Turkey. The company, he said, had no legal obligation to build safety chambers.

Asked about that issue, Minister of Labor and Social Security Faruk Celik defended Turkey's workplace safety act and said it was set up within the framework of EU regulations, according to CNN Turk.

"This is a dynamic area," he said, adding that it is the duty of each company to ensure workers' safety needs are met. "Could people be sent to death because a certain sentence is not in the regulations?" he said.

Istanbul Technical University said it had dropped Gurman and a fellow Soma Holding manager, Ismet Kasapoglu, from an advisory panel in its mining faculty, following protests and an occupation by students at the university, CNN Turk reported.

Source:CNN