Where ships and men come to die: Turkey’s hazardous ship-breaking industry
ALİAĞA — On the last day of August 2024, İbrahim Karakaya was finishing some work before lunch. The 59-year-old contractor was dismantling an oil rig that once belonged to Norwegian company Fred Olsen & Co.
Like other vessels that arrive at the İşiksan ship-breaking yard in Aliağa, İzmir, the rig had been put out of service and was being taken apart for scrap metal and anything else worth salvaging.
Karakaya worked for a company that removed materials and furniture from ships. That day, he proceeded as usual until he accidentally opened a chamber containing toxic gas. Karakaya was not wearing any protective gear and died on the spot after breathing the fumes. Three colleagues who rushed to assist him were hospitalized.
“Opening a valve, it’s that simple – you are actually that close to death,” Serdar Gür, a representative of the Workers’ Platform of the Aegean, told Turkey recap, commenting on Karakaya’s passing.
Karakaya’s death was only the latest instance in a long streak of work-related incidents at Aliağa’s 22 ship-breaking yards. The sites combined make up the world’s fourth-largest center for ship dismantling. It’s also one of the few – and the most popular – destinations for European vessels.
Despite its position in the sector, Aliağa remains marred by a lack of safety standards and poor labor conditions, according to various reports, workers and experts consulted by Turkey recap.
“No one wants their children to work there,” Alperen*, a crane operator in his mid-40s, said. “It is dirty, there’s asbestos and there is a lot of dust and smoke.”
For all the horrors he witnessed there, Alperen added tight bonds with other workers, limited alternatives and relatively good pay have kept him in the business for the past 30 years.
Still, prospects for change are improving. A month before Karakaya’s death, a landmark ruling set a crucial precedent for recognizing and compensating mesothelioma – an asbestos-linked lung cancer that has wiped out an untallied number of ship-breakers – as an occupational disease.
In parallel, several ship dismantling yards recently set out to improve their practices to attract more European fleet owners.
A deadly industry
The work at ship dismantling plants consists of breaking up large vessels – from used oil rigs to container carriers, cruise ships and military ships – to extract the raw metal they contain, discarding unrecyclable components and pollutants. The scrapped metal is then sold to scrap dealers and iron-steel mills for smelting – which is how yards make a profit.
Over the past 15 years, Aliağa’s yards have sliced apart more than 2,200 ships, generating over 15 million gross tons of scrap, data from the Brussels-based NGO Shipbreaking Platform shows. In 2020, these facilities disassembled 85 percent of all EU-flagged vessels, according to figures by the Ship Recycling Association of Turkey (GEMISANDER).
From 2020 to 2024, at least 10 laborers in the ship-breaking industry were crushed, burned, caught in explosions, or fell to their deaths among a workforce of around 15,000, according to an internal count the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG) shared with Turkey recap.
Five of these fatalities occurred in 2021 alone, which represents a mortality rate of roughly 30 times the national average that year, the organization noted.
“We’ve had friends get burned, and some have been poisoned,” Alperen said. “Why did this happen? Because of carelessness.”
Visuals shared by apparent yard employees over the past three years on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram reveal consistent irregularities at the ship-breaking yards, with staff performing tasks such as welding and cutting without protective suits, masks or helmets.
“Imagine that their spouses send their partners to a place where they can die at any moment every day,” Sonay Tezcan, who also represents the Workers’ Platform of the Aegean, said, recounting how one of her friends passed away from severe burns after an oil leak at a shipyard.
“Workers may not die, but they can have major accidents that can leave them paralyzed. They are also constantly exposed to chemicals, without [being informed of the risks],” Tezcan continued.
Besides work-related incidents, many of Aliağa’s first generation of ship-breakers, who migrated from inner Anatolia in the 1970s to combine summertime farming with ship dismantling in the winter, have succumbed to health issues related to prolonged exposure to a toxic environment – a threat now looming over younger generations of ship-breakers.
In addition, various experts, workers and unionists told Turkey recap that despite the dangerous conditions at the yards, many occupational diseases and deaths remain unreported or unaddressed. The reasons cited include a lack of unionization, close-knit family ties within the yards and strong political connections in the sector that seek to keep issues hidden from public scrutiny.
When someone dies, operations pause briefly as colleagues and bosses – often hailing from the same towns in Tokat and Sivas – attend the funeral together before returning to their jobs as usual, Alperen explained.
“At that moment, you don’t want to work. Things get heavy. So many people feel the same way,” Alperen said. “But you have to keep going. You’re the breadwinner, and you have children, so somehow you push through.”
An evolving legal landscape
Throughout, the ship-breaking industry has operated under regulatory frameworks that are currently in flux.
Since 2019, several of Aliağa’s yards have managed to join an exclusive list of 44 shipyards accredited by the European commission to dismantle EU-flagged vessels, which make up about 40 percent of the world’s fleet. As of July 2024, 11 Turkish yards are on the list, while others are applying to join.
To be included, facilities must meet EU Ship Recycling Regulation (ESR) safety and environmental standards, including proper gear, waste management and audits. This has led to some improvements in facilities and working conditions, according to workers, yard owners and EU officials.
“Ship recycling facilities are subject to thorough assessment for compliance,” Adalbert Jahnz, a European Commission spokesperson, said, underscoring that the Commission keeps scrutiny and non-conforming yards are removed from the list.
Alperen, who recently switched over to an EU-accredited firm, noted several positive changes regarding the dismantling process and overall work environment.
“They paid a lot of attention. But other sites don’t pay as much attention,” he said, adding that the lack of knowledge about the ship’s contents frequently leads to accidents and deaths.
Emre Aras, project manager at the EU-accredited yard Avşar, also emphasized that there are significant improvements, particularly regarding occupational safety at licensed facilities, such as ensuring that workers use approved full-face masks, filtered masks and certified flame-resistant clothing.
Meanwhile, announced and unannounced audits verify compliance with these standards, Aras explained. He added that Avşar has been EU-approved since 2020.
“They [EU surveyors] came to ensure that the processes we claimed to implement during the application were indeed being maintained,” Aras said.
Based on these outcomes and with industry players pushing for alternatives outside Europe, an updated ESR, expected in early 2025, might see more non-EU yards added to the list.
Speed over safety
However, many observers remain wary, as two of Aliağa yards were removed from the list just two years ago for failing to uphold EU regulations. The first was Işıksan, which redirected vessels to nearby non-listed sites. The Şimşekler facility, allegedly owned by the son of former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, was also removed after multiple fatal accidents in 2021 and 2022.
Moreover, since the EU moved to unannounced inspections in 2024, all of Aliağa’s ship-breaking sites received “remarks” from inspectors, with reports indicating that workers often do not wear the necessary safety equipment.
Turkey recap reached out to the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning, the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, GEMISANDER, as well as 11 yards directly, but did not receive any replies apart from the Avşar shipyard.
Alp Ergör, a professor at İzmir’s Dokuz Eylül University and former labor inspector at the yards, also remains skeptical. He noted that despite many changes, Aliağa’s business model is still based on speed over safety to boost turnover.
“Employers used to cut corners to save time, and they still do,” Ergör told Turkey recap.
Under normal circumstances, it could take months to properly assess environmental and work-related dangers before dismantling a large-ton craft, Ergör explained. However, this time is often trimmed short, as boats are dismantled without proper inspections, hazardous material inventory reports (IHM), adequate leak controls or protective gear.
Instead of dry docks, widely regarded as the industry gold standard, Aliağa’s ship-breaking plants use the landing method.
In dry docks, boats are placed into an enclosed space for dismantling, ensuring better control and safety. In contrast, the landing method involves dragging ships onto a concrete slope with a pulley system, leaving them partially submerged as they are cut apart and gradually hauled ashore.
Footage from such operations indicates these vessels are often rammed at high speed into the shore, causing spills. Separately, EU inspections revealed that the pulley systems are often poorly maintained, which has led to deadly accidents.
Aras noted developing a dry dock or similar investments is currently out of the question for the Avşar yard due to space limitations.
“We would like to make these kinds of investments, but to do so, we need to own the land first,” Aras said, adding that there is no alternative for Turkish ship-breaking plants except their current location.
Aliağa’s 22 yards are located on 70 hectares of leased land owned by Turkey’s Mass Housing Development Administration (TOKİ) since 2004. Yet the area’s future is uncertain: the lease expires in 2026 and Turkish authorities formally put up the land for sale in 2023.
Asbestos exposure
As a result of not taking precautions, personnel and the environment are constantly at risk of exposure to dangerous chemicals, toxic heavy metals and asbestos, which multiple reports have found to be widespread in the area around the yards.
A single asbestos fiber is enough to spark mesothelioma in the long term. But vessels brought to Aliağa often hold tons of the carcinogen. The recently dismantled French-flagged Raymond Croze likely contained 50,100 tons of asbestos, according to Ekin Sakin from the Brussels-based NGO Shipbreaking Platform.
“Not only are the thousands of workers at the dismantling site at risk, but the local population also faces significant danger,” Cafer Findan, an asbestos removal specialist involved in a 2021 investigation on asbestos exposure in Aliağa, told Turkey recap.
Asbestos fibers can be carried on workers' clothes, prolonging exposure while also endangering others. Yet, while asbestos causes around 78 percent of all occupational cancers in the EU, no employee in Aliağa has ever been officially diagnosed with an occupational disease – a fact the NGO Shipbreaking Platform described as “astonishing”.
This discrepancy is not lost on Berkay*, a 38-year-old former ship-breaker, who was forcefully pushed out of the sector following multiple strikes and unionization attempts in 2022.
“There’s no chance of not getting cancer. Zero,” he told Turkey recap, having just returned from a hospital where he underwent tests for potential work-related diseases.
Berkay’s fears are well-founded. Over the past 20 years, his sledgehammer broke apart all kinds of large vessels, battering their asbestos-lined belly until metal appeared. This, more often than not, occurred without any protective measures.
“Of course, I did this without protection,” he said. “In the last three to ten years, they started to take some precautions. But only dust masks – dust masks don’t protect.”
Moreover, his father, who introduced him to the trade at the age of 13, died a decade ago from suspected, work-related lung cancer. Two more of his family members in the industry have also been recently diagnosed.
“My body is fine, for now, but the effects of asbestos only show up after twenty to thirty years,” Berkay said. “I have another ten to go, and it will surface. I’m scared.”
Since the symptoms often appear years later, addressing responsibility becomes complicated, as workers may have already left their jobs, said Ramis Sağlam, a local journalist for the daily Evrensel.
“Workers don’t die [from diseases] while actively working. Why? Few can work for twenty years in these conditions,” Sağlam told Turkey recap.
He continued, pointing out that despite its heavy industrialization since the 1970s, Aliağa currently lacks an occupational disease hospital. This hinders proper diagnosis, and thus, legal action.
“These people have occupational diseases. They suffer from pneumoconiosis and other lung conditions, but we don’t diagnose them – we can’t diagnose them,” Ergör stressed.
As of January 2025, a long-awaited regional occupational disease hospital remains under construction.
However, the abovementioned and first-ever compensation for mesothelioma in the summer of 2024 could open the door for wider recognition of asbestos and other carcinogenic substances as occupational diseases.
The case involved the family of Mustafa Zafer Genç, a deceased welder, who secured the restitution of over 200,000 liras for work-induced mesothelioma after a decade-long legal struggle.
Genç, a worker at a shipyard in İstanbul’s Kaşımpasa district, developed the cancer more than 20 years after retiring in 1990.
In 2012, his request for an incapacity pension was denied despite proof from a hospital that the disease was occupational. Though he died that year, his family continued a legal battle to prove his fatal condition was job-related.
A court ultimately ruled in their favor, holding an employer liable for the first time since Turkey added asbestos-related illnesses to its national list of occupational diseases in 1972.
“The compensation provided is seen as a positive precedent for many victims,” Fidan said, adding that asbestos awareness is still in its infancy. “Five hundred people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. It is unclear how many of these cases are due to occupational exposure.”
This is one of the main reasons why Berkay, together with a doctor in İzmir, hopes to have his potential diagnosis officially classified as an occupational disease.
“It would pave the way for my fellow workers to apply there as well, leading to an increase in such diagnoses,” he said. “But we have to die for this.”
*Out of concern for retaliation from (former) employers, Turkey recap opted to use pseudonyms.
Editorial note: Fieldwork for this report has been made possible by Mongabay, a US-based non-profit conservation and environmental science news outlet.
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