The most emotional photograph from the Soma mine disaster was of a rescued miner covered all in black laid on a stretcher. His rescuer wished him good luck, and the miner said, “Should I remove my boots, so they do not dirty the stretcher?” Millions of Turks cried watching this scene. In the midst of tragedy, to see a survivor worrying about “dirtying the stretcher” was a heart-stabbing moment.

Within 24 hours of this incident another young man made the news from Soma. Yusuf Yerkel, an aide to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was caught on camera kicking a man. The prime minister’s convoy was met with angry protesters in Soma. The cars were “attacked” by local youth who were chanting, “Erdogan resign.” At one point, a protester allegedly used expletives, which is when Yerkel lost his cool and attacked the man. One minor detail is that two policemen already had subdued the protester when Yerkel began to kick him.

Yerkel is one of the youngest on Erdogan’s team. He was a research assistant at SETA (Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research) and has some postgraduate education at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The images shook social media so strongly that a campaign was launched to complain about Yerkel to SOAS. SOAS publicly announced that Yerkel is no longer registered at their school. However, this campaign is an indication of how desperate Turks were “to react” toward such cruelty.

This was the first time in modern Turkish history that a Turkish bureaucrat attacked a private citizen in the public eye. That is, until news broke on May 15 that Erdogan himself allegedly punched one of the protesters. Erdogan had gone on record during a speech in Soma, declaring the protesters of the mining disaster as “reprobate and immoral.” To top this angry rhetoric, along with tens of his bodyguards, Erdogan entered a supermarket where he was recorded punching a young man. Then, we see the bodyguards beating the victim. Before the punching, we hear Erdogan shouting at the victim, “Why are you running away? Come here, you were just telling me to resign.” Some in social media also claim Erdogan is saying, “Why are you running away, you Israeli seed?”