A doctor of forensic medicine reported the work-related death of İsmail Taran, a 49-year-old quarry worker, as death from a heart attack, Veryansın TV reported on Tuesday.
The TV report revealed the scandal that took place in May of last year in western Turkey, along with video footage of Taran’s family desperately digging in the sand with their hands and unearthing his body.
Taran’s coworkers and family realized he was missing, but the company hadn’t notified his relatives, who arrived at the quarry after hours to look for him themselves, only to find him buried under a pile of sand.
The doctor’s autopsy report said there was no sign of trauma on the body and that Taran’s death was due to a heart attack.
Taran was reportedly suffering from pre-existing cardiac disease.
Because of the autopsy report, the death was not classified as work-related.
The family’s criminal complaints against the doctor, who allegedly issued the autopsy report without even examining the body, went without an investigation, Veryansın TV said.
Taran’s family members claimed that the misleading autopsy report was “sabotage.”
Prosecutors have launched an investigation into two managers at the company.
Turkey has recorded at least 1,929 deaths in work-related accidents throughout 2023, according to figures provided by the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG).
People have been suffering from lax work safety standards for decades in Turkey, where workplace accidents are nearly a daily occurrence. In the worst work-related accident in the country’s history, 301 miners lost their lives in an explosion in Manisa’s Soma district in May 2014.
According to İSİG, more than 30,000 work-related accidents have taken place since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in November 2002.
İSİG General Coordinator Murat Çakır had earlier said the reason for the record number of fatalities in work-related accidents has to do with the policies of the AKP, which he said aim to turn Turkey into a source of cheap labor for Europe.
According to Çakır, workers feel obliged to work under unsafe conditions fearing that they will become jobless and unable to support their families.
İSİG began to record occupational fatalities in 2011. The platform also records the number of workers who died due to the lack of work safety in past years in addition to campaigning for stricter measures to maintain safety in workplaces.
A yearly report by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on labor rights reveals that Turkey is one of the 10 worst countries in the world for working people. According to the Brussels-based ITUC, workers’ freedoms and rights continued to be relentlessly denied with police crackdowns on protests in Turkey in 2022.
