The explosion that tore through a cosmetics production facility in the Mimar Sinan neighbourhood of Dilovası, Kocaeli, on the morning of 8 November 2025 claimed the lives of six workers. But the impact of the blast extended far beyond the boundaries of a workplace accident; it was the latest, and perhaps most violent, manifestation of the industrial–political–poverty triangle that has been bearing down on the district for decades.
Dilovası stands as a microcosm of Turkey’s broader failures: unregulated industrialisation, unplanned and title-less housing areas, and cancer rates that remain alarmingly high.
The town carrying the weight of Turkey’s industry
Dilovası’s troubled story began in the late 1970s, when heavy industrial plants were redirected to the Gulf of İzmit in an attempt to ease the burden on Istanbul. Companies chose their locations based on a simple formula, cheap land, easy transport, direct access to the port. What looked, at first glance, like economic planning would, over the years, become an environmental and public-health disaster.
Throughout the 1980s, the district received a major influx of migrants, particularly from Kurdistan and the Black Sea region. The demand for cheap labour opened the door to widespread informal employment, shaping Dilovası’s long-lasting identity as a hub of the “working poor.” Yet the prosperity promised by industry flowed not to the people of Dilovası, but to the surrounding provinces and districts.
The growing population brought unplanned construction with it. Land ownership was unclear, zoning plans were incomplete, and most residents lacked formal deeds. Over time, this became both a social pressure point and a political tool. The absence of deeds turned into one of the most effective mechanisms of local political control: “We’ll give you your deed, if you give us your vote.”
Dilovası was granted district status on 22 March 2008 under Law No. 5747. Although this looked like an administrative upgrade, in practice it created a legal framework that made planning and permitting easier, smoothing the path for the expansion of the industrial zone. The additional authority given to the municipality was not matched with additional oversight.
Every new Organized Industrial Zone (OIZ) established after the district status further eroded the region’s ecological balance. Today, Dilovası hosts seven Organized Industrial Zones, more than 250 large factories and over 400 industrial facilities of varying scale. In this dense industrial landscape, where chemical, metal, plastics and port-side operations sit side by side, environmental inspections have remained almost entirely symbolic.
Warnings ignored despite parliamentary reports
The Dilovası Research Commission, established in 2006, concluded in its report that the district had already reached saturation in terms of industrial capacity. Some of the key findings were stark:
* Existing industrial facilities posed critical environmental and public-health risks.
* Additional industrial investments would sharply increase air pollution, heavy-metal accumulation and threats to worker safety.
* No separation existed between industrial and residential areas; factories operated in the middle of neighbourhoods.
* Oversight mechanisms were inadequate, and inspections were often reduced to incomplete or fabricated reports.
Following the report, parliamentary correspondence and formal questions were brought to the agenda in 2007, yet no meaningful rehabilitation programme was ever implemented. The document was effectively shelved, and the absence of any zoning separation between industry and residential zones meant that risks to both public health and worker safety continued unchecked.
The health crisis in Dilovası is not an abstract statistic, it is the daily reality of thousands who breathe the toxic air and struggle with the consequences in their own bodies. Cancer rates, chronic asthma, COPD and persistent skin conditions have become the norm. These illnesses stand as a painful, living testament to how industrial emissions have flourished under political indifference.
A chain of neglect
The chain that kept factories embedded in the heart of residential areas and ultimately primed Dilovası for an explosion, was built on permits, profit and political bargaining. Because municipal and OIZ authorities prioritised political and economic relationships over public health, the very mechanisms designed to regulate industry were dismantled by local administrations themselves. What emerged was a tightly locked system of mutual benefit between capital and local power holders.
Most residents of Dilovası lived in homes without formal deeds and in deep economic dependency, leaving them afraid to speak out about safety violations. Silence became the cost of political control. When locals attempted to raise concerns about unregulated industry, municipal officials reminded them that their homes lacked deeds, a veiled threat that demolition would begin with their own neighbourhoods if they caused trouble. In this way, the enforced quiet of the community became the most efficient oversight tool the system could have hoped for.
Science was silenced
The condition of newborns became the most alarming evidence of Dilovası’s toxic reality, revealed through the research of Prof. Dr. Onur Hamzaoğlu. In studies conducted between 2006 and 2011, Hamzaoğlu detected heavy metals in the stool samples of newborn babies, proof that not only the present, but the future itself was being poisoned.
Instead of taking action, authorities chose to target the scientist who exposed the truth. They launched investigations and attempted to silence Hamzaoğlu, a move that laid bare just how deeply entrenched the alliance between industry and political power had become in Dilovası.
A control mechanism built on politics and profit: the Kurdish population
Dilovası’s political landscape and its web of profit-driven relationships sit at the heart of the district’s industrial concentration. The lack of property deeds and deep economic dependency have long served as tools to exert political and economic pressure on residents.
Roughly half of Dilovası’s population is Kurdish, with most families having migrated from Bingöl (Çewlig), Muş (Mûş), Erzurum (Erzirom) and Kars (Qers). This demographic reality has made the district a stronghold for the Kurdish political movement, the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which consistently receives high levels of support and holds significant potential to win local elections.
Because this political potential is perceived as a threat, mainstream system parties have developed overt and covert alliances, as well as targeted political strategies, to counterbalance Kurdish influence and prevent the municipality from shifting toward Kurdish political representation. The most common mechanism used against Kurdish residents has been the threat of “lack of formal property deeds”, the lack of formal property deeds. The absence of deeds became a primary instrument of political pressure, and residents were silenced through the constant threat that their homes could be demolished at any time.
Another major tool of control has been economic dependency. Employment prospects and social assistance programmes were used to manufacture political consent, indirectly shaping voting behaviour by sustaining material dependence. These layered threats and mechanisms created a climate of “social obedience,” one that suppressed public dissent and ensured that unregulated industry could continue unchecked.
In this system, the Kurdish population was not only treated as a cheap labour force but also as a demographic factor to be managed, a balancing element whose political weight needed to be contained to maintain local power structures.
The 2025 explosion: the final link in a long chain of neglect
The explosion that ripped through a cosmetics production facility in the Mimar Sinan neighbourhood of Dilovası on the morning of 8 November 2025 exposed the fractures that had been ignored for years. The plant had long been operating with high volumes of ethyl alcohol and other chemicals, and despite previous accidents in similar factories, such facilities had been exempted from proper inspections.
Most of the six workers who lost their lives were subcontracted and uninsured. Safety measures were inadequate, and fatal workplace incidents had become routine. Municipal and OIZ officials continued to issue permits through political and economic networks, while the mechanisms that should have curbed unregulated industry were disabled by local administrations themselves.
Faced with this network of profit and political leverage, residents were forced into silence, trapped by economic dependency and the constant threat created by the lack of formal property deeds. This engineered quiet kept factories embedded deep within residential neighbourhoods, making an explosion all but inevitable. The chain of technical and administrative failures turned the tragedy in Dilovası from a workplace accident into the outcome of a long-standing system of structural control.
The blast was the visible eruption of years of neglect, inadequate oversight and social pressure. Although the government framed the incident as a “one-off workplace accident,” the explosion was the unavoidable result of a decades-long cycle of neglect.
Profit, zoning permissions and political control were placed above public safety and the right to life. Dilovası stands as a stark reminder of how the lives of the poor, and the environment they depend on, continue to be sacrificed for capital and political gain. Unless the structural foundations of this system are confronted, this explosion will be remembered not as an isolated tragedy, but as a warning of disasters yet to come.