Turkey conducts massive crackdown on construction contractors
2023.02.13 14:45
Turkey conducts massive crackdown on construction contractors
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Several property developers have been detained or arrested by Turkish authorities as the death toll from the devastating earthquake last week climbed above 36,000.
According to the Turkish Emergency Coordination Center SAKOM on Monday, the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey near the border with Syria on Monday has now claimed the lives of 31,643 people in Turkey. State media reported on Sunday that 4,574 people have died in Syria.
Turkey’s deadliest earthquake occurred last week, killing 32,962 people in 1939.
Turkey’s residents have been trapped beneath the rubble, and emergency responders have been frantically trying to reach them. According to the volunteer group known as the White Helmets, rescue operations in northwest Syria have now come to an end.
Resentment has increased among those impacted by the loss of loved ones, and many are now seeking to assign blame for the extent of the disaster.
Authorities in Turkey are looking into 163 people in connection with building collapses amid rising public outrage. Anadolu, Turkey’s state-run news agency, reports that 48 people are currently in police custody and eight of those under investigation have been arrested.
Anadolu reported that public prosecutors determined the responsibilities of the eight individuals who were held pending trial. The authorities did not provide any additional information regarding the nature of the investigation.
During his earlier visit to Diyarbakir on Monday, Turkey’s justice minister Bekir Bozdag stated that the judicial investigations were being conducted by public prosecutor offices in all earthquake-affected regions.
Bozdag explained that “our municipalities have this information” because “some of the buildings are 30 years old, some are older, some are 20 years old, and some were built more recently.” He continued: This information is evaluated during audits, and our public prosecutors conduct investigations to ascertain who is responsible for these constructions.
Anadolu reports that on Monday, prosecutors in the city of Malatya issued arrest warrants for 31 individuals based on their connections to collapsed structures.
According to Anadolu, citing security forces, Nazmi Tosun, a construction supervisor and technical representative for the Emre Apartment, which was destroyed in Gaziantep province, was arrested in Istanbul early on Monday.
While attempting to leave the country on Sunday, several contractors who officials believed were responsible for several destroyed buildings in the city of Adiyaman were apprehended at Istanbul airport. Anadolu reported that Yavuz Karakus and his wife, Sevilay, had $16,000 and an additional 20,000 Turkish lira (approximately $1,061) on them at the time. The couple has built several buildings in Adiyaman. Reporters were told by Karakus: My conscience is unhindered. I made 44 homes. Four of them went down. I followed the rules in every way.
According to Anadolu, Mehmet Yaşar Coşkun, a contractor who was responsible for the collapse of Rönesans Residence, a block of high-rise luxury apartments in Hatay province, was stopped by authorities at the airport on Saturday as he attempted to flee to Montenegro. He claimed that his flight had nothing to do with the collapsed building and that he had no idea why his building had collapsed. According to Anadolu, another contractor, Mehmet Ertan Akay, whose residential building in Hatay also fell, was taken into custody by Istanbul police.
According to Anadolu, citing the Gaziantep Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, another contractor, Brahim Mustafa Uncuolu, was detained in Istanbul on Saturday after his inspections of the collapsed Bahar Apartments in the earthquake’s epicenter of Gaziantep were found to be negligent. When that building collapsed, at least nine people were killed.
Anadolu, citing security forces, reported that Hasan Alpargün, owner of a company that constructed buildings in Adana that have since collapsed, was detained on Saturday in Northern Cyprus. On Monday, prosecutors in Adana made 31 arrests as part of their investigation.
Construction standards and building regulations in Turkey are receiving increased scrutiny, which coincides with the clampdown on contractors.
Due to Turkey’s location on multiple tectonic plates, earthquakes are common. However, the quake that occurred last week was particularly destructive; aid chief Martin Griffiths of the United Nations referred to it as the “worst event in 100 years in this region” on Monday.
After the devastating Izmit earthquake in the Marmara region in 1999, which killed more than 17,000 people and left about half a million homeless, the country has strict regulations. Contractors’ detentions may be viewed by many as an attempt by the government to shift blame for the disaster’s scope from the state to individuals.
Building codes were tightened after previous disasters, which should have ensured that modern structures could withstand significant tremors. However, it appeared as though many of the destroyed buildings in the affected area were brand-new. Experts and residents are now questioning whether the government failed to enforce building regulations.
According to Yasemin Didem Aktas, a structural engineer and lecturer at University College London, the magnitude of the damage suggests that buildings did not meet safety standards, even though the earthquake and its aftershocks were “a very powerful event that would challenge even code compliant buildings.”
Didem Aktas stated, “What we are seeing here is definitely telling us something is wrong in those buildings. It could be that they were not designed in line with the code in the first place, or the implementation was not designed properly.” Additionally, we frequently observe that post-occupancy modifications to buildings compromise their structural safety in Turkey.
She continued, “These are the early days, and hopefully we’ll be on the ground to complete our engineering assessments in due course.” However, for the time being, she stated, “We can say they were definitely faulty.”
The Turkish government’s periodic approval of so-called “construction amnesties”—essentially legal exemptions that, for a fee, forgave developers for building projects without the necessary safety requirements—is also being questioned by a number of critics.
The aim of the amnesties was to make older, substandard buildings that hadn’t been built with the right permits legal. Additionally, they did not demand that developers bring their properties up to code.
In 2018, the government announced that more than half of the country’s buildings were known to be in violation of building code, leading to the passage of the most recent construction amnesty. The majority of building violations, according to the state, occurred between 1950 and 2000.
Throughout his two decades as president and prime minister, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has frequently placed construction at the center of his economic development policies. Many people have interpreted the government’s amnesties over the years as a means of obtaining votes because they frequently occurred during election campaigning.
Experts also say that contractors wouldn’t have been able to move forward with their projects if a number of local officials might have approved their subpar work and said corruption was to blame.
When the 7.6-magnitude Izmit quake struck in 1999, Ajay Chhibber, an economist who was the director of the World Bank for Turkey, stated that the construction of amnesties was “a huge issue.”
They simply proceed to construct the building. They violate the rules. Because they fund their political parties, they are aware that some politicians will eventually grant them amnesty. That is a significant issue.
Chhibber went on to say that earthquakes don’t always mean widespread destruction, as was the case this past week. Unless it is caused by humans, it need not be a disaster of this magnitude. Additionally, the absence of a proper building code enforced contributes to the man-made component. These structures shouldn’t have been able to fall so quickly. He stated, “Some of them were constructed just a year or two ago.”
