Brave New World

Increasingly, I hear people saying that we're living in an Orwellian world. Some even say "1984" is already here. Is it?

Zafer Aç?kgöz was a 28-year-old subcontracted health worker. Last year, while he was emptying the garbage at Istanbul Medical School, he was pricked by a needle. Despite this, he was forced to clean the sewage without gloves. He was infected and diagnosed with Hepatitis B. 

Three-year-old son of a miner, who was killed in Turkey?s worst mine disaster in 2013 along with 300 other miners in Soma, died on May 4 due a disease he had been suffering from for two years. 

In the fifth hearing of the Soma case, where 301 miners died, the mother of one of the victims addressed the panel of judges. ?If I were the sea, my pain would be reflected on the shores? Why are you making us listen to the lies of these people? Could you ask them this: Have you ever held you dead son in your arms?? she said.

Twelve officials have been detained in a second wave of operations as a part of the probe into the Soma mine disaster, which claimed lives of 301 workers in May.

Yet another “work accident” took place in Turkey last week, when an elevator at the construction of a luxury skyscraper in the middle of Istanbul collapsed. Ten workers died right on spot, leaving behind traumatized families and angry protesters.

BELGRADE - A short film by slam poet Sinisa Stojanovic Sinister and Dragana Nikolic 'Soup Kitchen', a production of citizens' association Poezin, will be screened at the Berlin film festival Brave New World on September 4.

Small shop owners’ debts in the town of Soma in the Aegean province of Manisa have been postponed for a year to support the business in the town, which was hit by the major mining disaster that killed 301 workers.

Selahattin Demirtaş, the presidential candidate and co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has likened the Soma mine disaster to the killing of 34 civilians mistaken for terrorists by the Turkish Air Forces in the Şırnak’s Uludere district in 2011.

Lawyers of the Soma Holding, which owns the mine where 301 workers died in an accident on May 13, told the court that 393,000 Turkish Liras compensation demanded by one victim’s family will make the disaster something “to be longed for” by others.