Interview with Mahir Ulutaş: The labour market created by this flawed system is at a standstill
In Turkey, mining policies have long been debated in terms of their economic contribution, employment and development. However, the ecological destruction caused by mining investments, occupational safety issues and low added value are reigniting the debate.
We spoke with Mahir Ulutaş about mining's real share in the economy, the results of privatisation policies, and the new dependency relationships taking shape under the name of ‘green transformation’.
While mining investments are often legitimised as a source of employment at the local level, we see that their share of GDP does not exceed 1%. Who benefits from this system? How do you assess the fact that the economic yield remains so low despite the licensing of such a vast geographical area?
In our country, the mining sector is one of the areas where the gap between economic efficiency and social/ecological costs is widest due to privatisation and marketisation practices. Costs are reduced and profits maximised through the subcontractor or foreman system. The fact that the share of revenue from mining in GDP remains around 1% indicates that the added value generated is not being socialised. Our minerals are largely sold abroad without being processed, and their contribution to the national economy remains low. Companies that can extract minerals cheaply for the country are structured to quickly convert these minerals into cash. The recent downsizing of mining companies is also due to this structure, which exports minerals in their unprocessed or semi-processed state rather than converting them into final products.
Selling raw materials extracted in our country cheaply and importing processed products at high prices will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the country's economy. Moreover, if we take into account the social costs such as the destruction of agricultural land, the pollution of groundwater and the deterioration of public health, there may even be a net loss. Mining companies may be making profits while causing damage to the country's economy. Mines are mostly marketed to the local population as a ‘source of employment’. However, the recent increase in worker resistance reveals that raw materials extracted through a practice of complete exploitation are sold to international monopolies at low profit margins, and that this distorted model, which allows local partners to accumulate capital by disregarding all worker health and safety measures in order to expand their scale, has created a temporary and insecure employment regime that has reached a dead end.
‘A SYSTEMATISED REGIME OF NEGLECT’
With the privatisation of mines, we see that public oversight mechanisms have been replaced by company declarations. What risks do you think the marketisation of oversight poses in the long term?
When the primary motivation behind the privatisation of mines and the marketisation of activities in the field is to maximise profit, worker health and safety measures are literally considered a cost. We cannot even keep track of the number of mining disasters caused in our country by the pursuit of the highest profitability at the lowest possible cost. In mining accidents, sometimes the workers' bodies cannot even be recovered, and sometimes the mining sites are destroyed beyond use. The Çöllolar Coal Mine in Afşin-Elbistan, which experienced a landslide in 2011, not only became the grave of 11 workers, but production has not been possible at this site since then. In short, the lack of effective supervision of mines leads not only to deaths but also to the destruction of these public assets. The destruction of the Çöllolar site undoubtedly affects electricity production at the Afşin-Elbistan Thermal Power Plant.
The commercialisation of supervision; the transfer of supervisory authority to private auditing firms or to the operator's own declarations, creates an ‘institutionalised regime of negligence’ in a high-risk sector such as mining. No auditing firm can truly remain “independent” when auditing the company that pays it. In this model, industrial accidents become an ‘expected side effect’. Over time, paying compensation can become a cheaper (more cost-effective) option than bringing technical infrastructure up to standard. When a disaster occurs, the actual capital owner blames the subcontractor, the subcontractor blames the auditing firm, and the auditing firm blames an engineer with signing authority. The public sector then steps aside, saying, ‘We delegated the auditing authority.’
Privatisation creates a system where companies take the profits and leave the costs of ecological destruction to society. How technically feasible is the need for ‘rehabilitation’ that arises after mining sites are abandoned?
If public oversight is weakened even further, environmental impacts will be entirely at the mercy of companies. Unregulated waste ponds become massive time bombs, as we saw in the İliç example, leading to decades of contamination of groundwater and river basins. Restoring the land after a mining site closes is extremely costly. Without public pressure, companies will prefer to rehabilitate the site on paper. Although rehabilitation is theoretically possible, in practice it is highly likely to remain at the level of ‘ecological make-up’. In our country, as in some other countries, companies are not obliged to contribute to a fund for ‘closure and rehabilitation’. Given that even inspections during the operational phase are suspect, it would not be wrong to predict that rehabilitation will not be monitored. It is not difficult to predict that companies will declare bankruptcy by withdrawing from the site when it is no longer economically viable to mine. Ultimately, it is clear that the rehabilitation costs that will be left to the public will far exceed the revenue the state has earned from that mine.
WHILE PROFITS ARE TRANSFERRED ABROAD, ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION AND INDUSTRIAL MURDERS CONTINUE TO REMAIN AT HOME
The investment race for critical minerals, especially for ‘green technology,’ also continues. Turkey's participation in this race seems to be trapping the country in a new relationship of dependency within the global capitalist system. Is this new form of mining different from colonial mining, or are we facing a new version of the same logic?
This question must be evaluated within the framework of the concept of ‘neo-colonialism,’ which we also frequently mention. The situation we face is a continuation of classic colonial mining, but painted ‘green.’ So-called ‘developed’ countries produce or have produced high-tech “green” products using rare elements extracted from ‘developing’ countries. They acquire the necessary lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements and copper cheaply. The pollution generated during mining remains in the developing country, while the ‘clean,’ ‘carbon-free,’ and high-value-added ‘green product’ remains under the control of global capital.
Countries like Turkey are forced to import the technology required for this so-called ‘green’ transition. To finance this import, they strive to export more cheap raw minerals. In other words, in order to be able to buy solar panels, we are forced to license mountains and rocks and search for raw materials to sell cheaply. In the colonial mining directly experienced by African countries, raw materials were loaded directly onto ships and taken away. The model we are experiencing, however, is supported by complex incentive mechanisms, international arbitration, purchase guarantees and ‘green’ energy rhetoric. At the end of the day, while profits are transferred abroad, ecological destruction and workplace fatalities remain at home.
Recently, another privatisation example related to electricity production has been revealed to have failed. While it is clear that the Soma B Thermal Power Plant is operating at a loss and becoming a burden on the public, the Soma A Thermal Power Plant is also being sought for privatisation. As part of this initiative, which will increase public losses in Soma, a tender has been launched to privatise the Soma A Thermal Power Plant, owned by the public company EÜAŞ, along with 91,000 square metres of land, by the end of 2025 through a sale method. It is clear that the Soma B Thermal Power Plant has not been operated efficiently over the past 10 years. This situation, despite the transfer of public resources, demonstrates that privatisation and marketisation efforts must be halted. The Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK), which has become an instrument for the transfer of public resources to the private sector in an uncertain manner, should be closed down and replaced by a Nationalisation Administration Presidency to carry out nationalisation procedures. The privatisation of the Soma A Thermal Power Plant should be abandoned, and preparations for the nationalisation of the Soma B Thermal Power Plant should be made.
Our mines are a valuable public asset beneath the ground. We must save our mines, which companies see merely as a source of quick cash flow, from being plundered by international capital. Our country's resources must be rescued from this cycle of ‘transfer,’ and a rational economic policy must be re-established to evaluate rare elements, our mines, and other underground resources.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Mahir Ulutaş ile söyleşi: Bu çarpık modelin yarattığı istihdam rejimi tıkanmıştır, published in BirGün newspaper on March 1, 2026.
