37 Killed as Turkey’s New Train Derails

At least 37 people were killed and scores were injured Thursday when a high-speed train traveling from Istanbul to Ankara derailed.

Witnesses said the train spun out of control at a bend near the town of Pamukova, about 113 miles east of Istanbul. At least four of the train’s cars piled on top of one another, then fell to their sides.

Transport officials said the train, with 234 passengers, was nearly full.

Turkish TV news channels showed rescue teams digging under the cars in search of victims. The injured passengers included many children with bloody faces.

“There are decapitated heads, limbs all around. It’s a bloodbath,” said Pamukova Mayor Feridun Turan, who had rushed to the scene.

Elcin Ozumturk, a doctor, survived the crash with his wife. “We were flung into the air, then the car fell sideways,” Ozumturk said. “People were screaming. There was smoke and shattered glass everywhere. We broke a window and crawled out.”

The cause of the accident was unknown, though transport officials said mechanical failure was most likely to blame.

Masum Turker, the head of a crisis center, said sabotage was not being ruled out. “We are examining all the possibilities,” Turker said at a news conference.

Within hours of the crash, opposition politicians and transportation experts were accusing Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party of having launched the high-speed service last month without adequately upgrading the tracks.

“The tracks are not physically strong enough to deal with such trains,” said Haluk Gercek, an academic at Istanbul Technical University. “Unfortunately our warnings went unheeded.”

Much of Turkey’s rail network, built in the 1890s under the country’s former Ottoman rulers, is antiquated compared with its modern highway system. Most Turks shun the rail system and prefer to travel by road.

The private NTV television rebroadcast footage of an interview in June with transportation expert Aydin Erel. “The tracks are not secure. I would never ride that train,” Erel said in the interview.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who canceled a trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina to visit the crash site, rejected those claims. “We carried out the necessary studies” before launching the service, he said. “The system is safe.”

The head of Turkey’s state rail system, Suleyman Karaman, said the train, named after a mid-20th century Turkish author, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, was traveling at a slower speed than normal when the crash occurred. “The accident is not linked to high speed,” Karaman said.

Several survivors disputed that claim.

“The train was going really fast and went out of control,” Oguz Sarisin told NTV from his hospital bed.

Another survivor, Abdullah Cagiridiken, said, “I saw the speedometer on the wall of the restaurant car just 15 minutes before the crash. The dial was pointing to 132 kilometers,” or about 80 mph.