SOMA, Turkey — There was no one to treat in the first aid tents near the entrance to the mine, where nearby an old woman wailed, “Our children are burning!” A man and his wife, dazed from a lack of sleep, walked the muddy grounds, looking for information that no one in the government could provide.
“This is how they steal people’s lives,” said the grieving father, Bayram Uckun, who like many here has become increasingly angry with the government for its response to the disaster. “This government is taking our country back 90 years.”
The body of Mr. Uckun’s son, and those of at least 17 other men, was almost certainly still trapped underground, after the deadliest industrial accident in Turkey’s modern history. But with the death toll from Tuesday’s accident expected to rise above 300, this disaster has quickly metastasized from a local tragedy into a new political crisis for the Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Relatives wept during a funeral service on Thursday in Soma, Turkey. Officials have confirmed 284 deaths in the mining accident, Turkey’s worst.Public Discontent Rises as Families Gather to Bury Victims of Turkish Mine DisasterMAY 15, 2014
Labor unions staged a one-day national strike on Friday as security forces shot tear gas and water cannons at protesters in Soma, in the capital, Ankara, and in Istanbul.
Mr. Erdogan, whose Islamist party still holds unrivaled political power after a decade, has recently stumbled from one political crisis to the next, often aggravating public outrage with high-handed remarks and an authoritarian determination. That was the case again in Soma, even while the dead were being buried here and bodies were still being recovered.
Mourners wanted answers when the prime minister visited. They said, instead, they got defiance.
“He inflamed the crowd,” said Ozcan, a hotel worker who gave only his first name. Ozcan was referring to an incident on Wednesday when the prime minister visited and the crowd began chanting “murderer.”
“When he saw people heckling him, he moved on them, which is the worst thing to do,” Ozcan said. “They are angry, they are frustrated, they are sad. If the prime minister is coming to town, he should bear in mind that if he even stepped out of his car, he would face some kind of protest.”
Instead of turning the other cheek, Mr. Erdogan dared his critics in the crowd to come closer. “It outraged people,” Ozcan said.
On the defensive from the start, Mr. Erdogan suggested that mining accidents were commonplace and occurred in developed countries. He recited a list of accidents in England that occurred in the 1800s, an awkward explanation from a leader who, for the last decade, has projected an image of Turkey as a modern democracy.
When his entourage faced angry hecklers in the town center, an aide to Mr. Erdogan was photographed kicking a protester as he lay on the ground. Seeking refuge from the mob of people, Mr. Erdogan was hustled by his security detail into a supermarket near the local municipal office, where he was apparently captured on video threatening another angry resident.
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