ALIAĞA, Türkiye — A court in Aliağa has jailed nine suspects pending trial over Monday's explosion at the HABAŞ steel plant in western Türkiye and placed the company's board chairman, Mehmet Rüştü Başaran, under house arrest, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported — the first court rulings in a disaster that killed at least 18 workers.

Source: Turkish Minute (Anadolu), Nov 12, 2026

The decisions came after 11 suspects — among them the factory director, senior managers, maintenance supervisors and engineers responsible for equipment inspections and operations — were questioned by law enforcement and brought before a judge. Nine were remanded in custody on suspicion of causing multiple deaths; Başaran and one other suspect were released under judicial supervision requiring them to remain at home.

Source: Turkey Unfolding, Nov 12, 2026

The toll: 19 or 18, and one worker still unaccounted for

The independent Health and Safety Labour Watch (İSİG) puts the death toll at 19, after Abdullah Kılınç, a worker critically injured in the blast, died on Wednesday at İzmir Bakırçay University's Çiğli Teaching and Research Hospital. Anadolu has reported 18. Worker Barış Güney, whose name appears on the list of the dead, remains missing, and no DNA sample matching his was found in forensic examinations, according to reports tracking the case.

Source: NGlobe News update, Nov 12, 2026

What happened on Nov 9

The explosion tore through the HABAŞ iron and steel works in Aliağa, an industrial district about 60 kilometres north of İzmir, at around 11:46 a.m. local time on Nov 9, followed by a fire that trapped workers under debris. The İzmir governor's office said its first findings suggested an overhead crane snapped and fell into an electric arc furnace during liquid-steel casting — a preliminary account, not an investigative finding. The plant, established in 1987, produces about 4.5 million tonnes of steel a year. An Aliağa court has also imposed a publication ban on the incident while the investigation continues.

A plant with a record, and a chairman with a past case

Monday's blast was the third fatal incident at the Aliağa plant in three weeks: subcontracted worker Hakan Doğan, 55, died on Oct 21 after falling about eight metres, and Eyüp Eğinli, 20, was killed on Nov 5 when a heavy vehicle tyre exploded during inflation. Separately, Başaran was sentenced on May 21 by the Kocaeli 1st High Criminal Court to four years, 10 months and 10 days in prison over a 2017 explosion involving an LPG tanker in Kocaeli — a different HABAŞ operation and a separate case, BBC Turkish reported. İSİG has recorded at least 1,930 work-related deaths across Türkiye in the first 10 months of 2026.

What happens next

The nine jailed suspects will remain in custody pending trial while prosecutors and four assigned investigators work through the technical cause of the blast and the plant's inspection history. Satellite heat readings compiled by the AIM metals desk found no heat at the Aliağa steelworks from Nov 10 to Nov 13 — after heat on 63 of the 70 days before the blast — fitting the reported shutdown, and market reporting by SMM suggested the outage could run beyond two to three weeks, with some domestic hot-rolled coil offers quoted around $650 a tonne against $630 before. Any finding of negligence will depend on the investigation and the trial; detention and remand do not by themselves establish criminal responsibility.