As anger swells, Turkey detains contractors

Turkish officials on Saturday began detaining dozens of contractors they blamed for some of the building collapses in Monday's devastating earthquake, as anger swelled over the government's slow rescue effort and the death toll in the country surpassed 21,000.

More than 100 people were detained across the 10 provinces affected by the quake, the state-run Anadolu News Agency reported Saturday, as the Turkish Justice Ministry ordered officials in those provinces to set up “Earthquake Crimes Investigation Units.” It also directed them to appoint prosecutors to bring criminal charges against all the “constructors and those responsible” for the collapse of buildings that failed to meet existing codes, which had been put in place after a similar disaster in 1999.

The arrests were the first steps by the Turkish state toward identifying and punishing people who may have contributed to the deaths of their fellow citizens in the quake.

Across the earthquake zone, residents expressed outrage at what they said were corrupt builders who cut corners to fatten their profits and the government's granting of “amnesties” to builders who put up apartment complexes that failed to meet the new codes.

Among those detained on Saturday was Mehmet Ertan Akay, builder of a collapsed complex in the hardhit city of Gaziantep, who was charged with involuntary manslaughter and violation of public construction law, a Turkish news agency reported. The Gaziantep prosecutor's office said it had issued the detention order after inspecting evidence collected from the rubble of the complex he had built.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, visiting Diyarbakir province on Saturday, defended the government's response to the earthquake, which has been criticized as slow and haphazard. Around the country, residents have waited impatiently for government help to find their loved ones in the rubble, keep their families warm and ensure they get enough to eat, in a country where inflation passed 80% last year.

While Turkey has building codes put in place after the 1999 quake, residents said that they were often not applied because contractors can earn more money when they cut corners: mixing the concrete and using cheaper metal bars to gird pillars, among other things.

A million or more people in the affected region are thought to be without shelter in a cold winter, U.N. officials said.