Will Soma’s mining disaster galvanise unrest in Turkey?

As the scale of the catastrophe became clear on Wednesday morning, everything changed. People stopped going about their daily business and instead participated in varying acts of solidarity with the miners of Soma – students boycotted their classes, workers walked out of their workplaces and others simply wore miner’s hats in the street.

The same sentiment was not shared by the government which, although declaring three days of national mourning, promptly continued as it had done before. An attitude summed up by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan when he argued the workers’ deaths were an inevitable consequence of the coal mining business and there was little that could be done.

‘Only five miners killed’

And so when protesters attempted to march on the energy ministry in Ankara, they were not met with any understanding of their anger, but the teargas that is unleashed upon almost any street protest in Turkey. Similar events took place in many of the big cities: in Istanbul protesters who tried to march to Taksim Square (the site of major street battles last year) were similarly tear-gassed.

None of this was surprising. The government had been reluctant to even admit the size of the tragedy. For a long time the reports in traditional media were that only five miners had been killed. It was only after rumours spread on social media that the government started admitting that the disaster was on a much larger scale.

In the absence of clear information from the traditional media, social media is being used to gather and spread information more effectively. An excellent example is the now famous photo of Mr Erdogan’s aide attacking a relative of one of the miners in Soma. First emerging on Tuesday night, it was largely due to its circulation on social media that the assault was linked to Erdogan.

Platforms for anger

Given the importance of Facebook and Twitter in disseminating information about the disaster, they have naturally become platforms for people to express their anger and organise their response. Hashtags and Facebook events have been used to quickly mobilise people on the streets of Turkey’s larger cities. In this sense the protests resemble the previous waves that swept the country sporadically over the last 12months.

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However, this should not remove the focus from the miners and their families, who have themselves launched several protests against the government in Soma itself.
For many in wider Turkish society, the deaths are the most tragic example of how the government’s rush into neoliberal economic reforms has come at an ever increasing social cost, and there is frustration that any opposition is met with violence and intimidation.

Gezi Park

The government’s strategy post-Gezi has been to write off protestors as a minority who do not represent the “real” Turkey. But the strength and breadth of solidarity with the miners means that this time the opposition cannot be demonised as just spoilt members of the middle class urban youth. There is an organic link between the government’s push to privatise state industries (at the cost of the employees) and the rush to redevelop Istanbul’s last green spaces like Gezi Park into shopping malls (at the cost of many residents).

One of the main weaknesses of protests over the last 12 months is that they have largely been confined to the big cities. This is no longer the case. The anger in Soma has the potential to galvanise unrest in the similar small Turkish cities that have formed the backbone of the government’s support. This, combined with the resurgence of the opposition movement on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul, could put Mr Erdogan in real trouble.

Niall Finn is a student at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. He tweets as @NiallFinn