Quake’s toll has Turkish builders feeling backlash
Government faulted by some for flouting of construction rules
ISTANBUL — Two dozen student volleyball players, four teachers and 12 parents visiting Turkey for a competition this month checked into the Grand Isias Hotel in the southern city of Adiyaman. When a powerful earthquake struck on Feb. 6, the building collapsed and killed dozens of people including everyone in the entourage except for four adults.
A university engineer who examined the wreckage found indications of weak concrete and insufficient steel reinforcements, he and his colleagues wrote in a preliminary report, concluding that shoddy construction had left the building vulnerable, even to smaller quakes.
In the weeks since, Turkish authorities have arrested three men connected to the hotel on unspecified charges as part of a wide-ranging dragnet targeting hundreds of building contractors and owners among others suspected of criminal negligence that contributed to deadly building collapses.
The suspects — some nabbed at the airport with stacks of cash or perpwalked on national television — have become the focus of public rage, with many now questioning whether they padded their profits by flouting the codes put in place over the last two decades to make buildings more quake resistant.
Construction industry experts say that contractors responsible for flawed buildings should be punished. But they also caution that targeting only them obscures gross negligence throughout the system meant to make buildings safe, which may have contributed to thousands of deaths. During most of the past decade, contractors could freely choose which private companies to hire to inspect their buildings, an arrangement that the government eventually concluded had led to “illegal commercial ties.”
“Putting the blame only on the contractors would be the easy way out,” said Ali Ozgunduz, a former state prosecutor who investigated collapsed buildings after another catastrophic earthquake in Turkey in 1999.
Since the 7.8 magnitude quake struck in early February, over 100,000 buildings have been damaged and more than 43,000 people have been killed in southern Turkey. More than 5,500 have died in Syria.
So far, the Turkish government has investigated 564 people suspected of connections to flawed or collapsed buildings, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported Wednesday. Of those, 160 have been detained pending trial, 175 are on probation, and arrest warrants have been issued for dozens more. Many are contractors and builders.
The government has released few specifics about who is being investigated and why, but flaws in some buildings that fell were well documented before the quake. In some cases, buildings so new that they should have followed updated seismic standards toppled over. In others, contractors paid fines for violating building codes, but no steps were taken to evacuate or strengthen the vulnerable structures, according to lawyers involved in the cases.
Cemal Gokce, a former
president of Turkey’s Chamber of Civil Engineers, a professional organization, accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government and his ruling Justice and Development Party of fostering a lax regulatory environment that left cities more vulnerable to earthquake damage.
“The government is trying to avoid responsibility by dumping it onto engineers and architects,” he said. “But the main culprit is the government because they put profits over the public interest.”
During visits to the disaster zone over the past few weeks, Erdogan seemed to
suggest that Turkey should improve its earthquake preparedness.
“It is highly important that we eliminate our shortcomings and fortify our strengths in light of past experiences,” he said Tuesday.
A seismically active country with a history of quakes, Turkey has upgraded its building codes since a powerful tremor near Istanbul in 1999 killed more than 17,000 people. But according to a 2021 parliamentary report, more than 7.8 million buildings constructed before the year 2000 are highly vulnerable to earthquakes.
For newer buildings, construction professionals say
the strengthened building codes are technically good. But builders sometimes fail to adhere to those codes.
Ozgunduz pointed out weak links at various levels: local officials who approved poorly designed projects, inspectors who overlooked flaws during construction, and the parliament’s passing of a blanket amnesty in 2018 for building code violations in millions of units.
“The political authority is liable too,” he said.
Hoping to broaden the scope of accountability, professional associations are preparing lawsuits against government officials they accuse of complicity.