Turkish workers' anger at elevator deaths

Hundreds of demonstrators took the streets of Istanbul on Sunday to demand stricter health and safety regulations in the workplace.

The protest comes after 10 people were killed when an elevator plunged 32 stories on a construction site on Saturday.

The demonstrators, many of them trade union members, marched to the site of the tragedy which was being guarded by police.

“Since the main agenda of the owners of this construction site is to make more money and profit, they don’t care whether workers die or not”, said one demonstrator, “in that sense this is actually a massacre. It is worse than murder since they already knew about it”, he added.

This latest incident comes four months after Turkey’s worst mining disaster claimed the lives of 301 miners in the west of the country.

Then, as now, the protester’s suspicions were that lax safety standards were a contributing factor.