A routine maintenance job at one of Turkey’s biggest steelworks ended in disaster on Monday. An explosion at the HABAŞ plant in Aliağa, about 60 kilometres north of Izmir, killed 17 workers and injured 13 more, two of them critically. Witnesses said the ground shook so hard that some first thought an earthquake had hit.
According to Izmir governor Süleyman Elban, an overhead crane gave way while crews were replacing a boiler. What it was carrying crashed down onto one of the furnaces, tearing open pipes that fed it gas and oxygen. A 52-year-old employee gave AFP a more vivid account: the crane cable snapped, roughly 120 tonnes of molten steel crashed onto the water-cooled furnace, and the reaction with the water set off the blast. Production had been paused for the repairs, which meant the hall was less crowded than on a normal shift.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking after a cabinet meeting, said investigators would establish how it happened and whether anyone had been negligent. Four prosecutors are on the case and several people have been taken into custody. Later that day the government confirmed a further victim, a worker who succumbed in hospital, bringing the count to 17. Rescue teams kept combing the debris for anyone still trapped.
The company, a privately held conglomerate, offered condolences and pledged to cooperate. Labour groups say the problem runs deeper. The independent Health and Safety Labour Watch describes workplace deaths in Turkey as chronic and reports that two other workers had already died in accidents at the same plant within the previous two weeks. The pro-Kurdish DEM party demanded that those responsible face justice.
