Five mineworkers were killed on 2 October when a face collapsed at the İmbat Madencilik operation in Soma, Manisa. Seven men were underground. Two were brought out alive.

The dead are Ramazan İnce, Halit Ersay, İsa Olcay, Kerim Ören and Ömer Karakaya. According to the Workers’ Health and Occupational Safety Council (İSİG Meclisi), İnce was branch officer of Bağımsız Maden-İş Ege No. 1 and the other four were members of the same union.

Nine company officials, among them the general manager, have been detained. No technical finding on the cause has been made public.

The operation where they died has caused 16 workplace deaths since 2013. İSİG Meclisi records at least 1,272 miners killed across Türkiye’s mining sector over the same thirteen years, and at least 1,509 workers killed in all sectors in the first eight months of 2026.

The Turkish Medical Association issued a statement headed “In Soma again negligence, again preventable miners’ deaths, again grief”. It states that what happened is neither fate nor an unpreventable accident, and that “the word Soma is engraved in Türkiye’s recent memory as the name of workers’ murders, with the grief of the 301 mineworkers we lost in 2014”. It attributes the deaths to inadequate public inspection, production pressure, and unregulated and insecure working conditions, and demands that the incident be investigated in all its dimensions with no concealment permitted, that inspections in mines and heavy industry be independent and scientific, that insecure work be ended, and that the professional independence of workplace physicians and safety experts be guaranteed in law.

On 3 October members of the youth group Gençlik Komünleri began a march along İstiklal Caddesi in İstanbul. “Those who exploit our labour and our lives are on one side, and we are on the other,” they said. “As young people we are marching for the miners who were killed.”

Police stopped them before they reached Taksim Square and detained them. Evrensel reports that they were subjected to police violence as they were taken to the police vehicle. Fifteen were held and released the same night.

The deaths are under investigation. So, for a day, were the people who marched about them.