Collapsed buildings in Turkey were identified with violations and legalized by Erdogan’s decree
2023.03.04 10:48
Collapsed buildings in Turkey were identified with violations and legalized by Erdogan’s decree
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – In the Turkish city of Malatya, the posh Trend Garden Residence was a serviced apartment building with a gym, newly furnished rooms, and a rooftop cafeteria.
However, 29 people were killed when the seven-story building collapsed during a powerful earthquake that struck the city early on Feb. 6, according to two government officials. One survivor described the structure as having “liquefied.”
According to a Reuters review of municipal and amnesty documents, architects’ drawings, and interviews with six people who are familiar with the Trend Garden’s history, the building had been extensively remodelled a few years ago without the necessary permits. However, the building was later registered thanks to a 2018 zoning amnesty promulgated by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The building had a colorful facade.
At the time, Erdogan stated that the amnesty, which was initially extended to building owners prior to his re-election in 2018, aimed to resolve tensions between citizens and the state regarding millions of buildings that had been “constructed in violation of urban planning.”
A criminal investigation is currently underway to determine who was responsible for the Trend Garden’s demise. Neighborhood investigators have captured something like three individuals associated with the structure on starter charges of causing passing by carelessness, as per the two government authorities who asked not to be named. According to the officials, the investigation would take into account every aspect of the building’s life.
Authorities have pledged to identify those responsible as the focus in Turkey grows on how poor construction may have contributed to the devastation caused by the earthquake, the deadliest natural disaster in the country’s modern history. The government reported that over 230 people, including developers and contractors in the construction industry, have been detained.
Aftershocks continue to shake the region, and the quake has killed over 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. The Trend Garden was one of the more than 200,000 buildings in the shattered regions affected by the earthquake, according to Turkish authorities. On Monday, another earthquake in Malatya resulted in the collapse of additional buildings.
Requests for comment, including on the amnesty and whether the policy contributed to the destruction caused by the earthquake, were not answered by the communications directorate of the Turkish presidency or the ministry of urbanization. Following the catastrophe, Erdogan, who has been in charge of Turkey since 2003, stated that building standards had improved under his direction.
According to government officials, Engin Aslan was one of those arrested as part of the Trend Garden investigation. According to corporate records, he is the majority shareholder of a Turkish company that, according to documents filed with the land registry, owns the building. Prior to his arrest, Aslan refused to speak with Reuters because he was grieving the loss of his brother, who was killed in the Trend Garden’s collapse, according to an employee of the apartment building’s management.
According to architects and civil engineers, it was too early to determine whether the building’s remodel, which included converting the attic into a full-fledged seventh floor and dividing 12 apartments into 42 smaller units, contributed to the collapse.
However, they claimed that the amnesty law causes fundamental issues because it has fostered a reckless culture in the construction industry in a nation with well-known earthquake risks and located on major fault lines.
Owners could legalize unregistered buildings under the amnesty by submitting an electronic application and paying a tax. The requirement for an independent assessment is not mentioned in the in-depth guidance that was issued by the ministry of urbanization, which was in charge of the process. However, the law says that the building’s owner must make sure it can withstand earthquakes.
Erol Erdal, a member of the Malatya branch of Turkey’s Chamber of Civil Engineers, stated, “That law is nonsensical.” People should be shielded from harm by the government and laws, not put in harm’s way.
Malatya Mayor Selahattin Gurkan told Reuters that authorities needed to learn from the earthquake but declined to comment on the Trend Garden’s collapse due to the ongoing investigation. The mayor, who is a member of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party (AKP), stated that “the zoning amnesty wasn’t the correct approach” when asked if regularizing illegal buildings might have presented safety risks.
Four members of Fatma Zehra Gorgulu’s family, including her three children and one sister, perished when the Trend Garden collapsed.
Six days after the earthquake, Gorgulu sat by a fire near the destroyed building in the icy cold and remained silent while rescue workers searched the rubble and she waited for news.
Following the catastrophe, Feyza Yilmaz, a third sister, had traveled to Malatya to assist her sibling. Yilmaz said that Gorgulu’s family had rented a room at the Trend Garden because it was close to a hospital where one of Gorgulu’s kids needed to be treated for a rare condition and where Gorgulu also had surgery scheduled. At the point when the tremor struck, Gorgulu was at the clinic while her little girl and two children were being cared for by the other sister at the home.
Lawyer Yilmaz, 32, said she wanted to know how a modern building that looked sturdy could fall apart like a house of cards.
She stated, “I want to know who is responsible for this.”
According to rescuers, the four bodies were found the following day.
The Trend Garden building and the zoning amnesty law of 2018 represent, according to some architects and civil engineers, Turkey’s failure to impose stringent antiseismic regulations while the 85 million people in the country continued to move to urban centers.
Erdogan praised the zoning amnesty as “a gesture of compassion” toward Turkish citizens who were confronted with a finicky administration ahead of the presidential elections in 2018 and the municipal elections in 2019. According to a video of his speech, the president stated to supporters during an AKP rally in Malatya in March 2019 that as a result of the policy, “the problems of 88,507 Malatya citizens have been resolved.”
The amnesty was extended multiple times by Turkish authorities. The government claims that the move has contributed billions of dollars to the state budget. The government stated in October of last year that as a result, more than 3 million households and businesses received their deeds.
Mustafa Destici, a leader of the Great Unity Party and an ally of Erdogan, proposed reviving the measure in the same month to assist others ahead of this year’s presidential elections. A spokesperson for Destici declined to comment on whether he would continue to support the proposal.
The government pledged to accelerate a plan to demolish and replace Turkey’s most dangerous buildings after a building in Istanbul that had benefited from the zoning amnesty collapsed in 2019 and killed 21 people. According to the government at the time, approximately one third of the 20 million properties in the nation raised safety concerns and necessitated action.
The head of Turkey’s Chamber of Architects, Eyup Muhcu, claims that Turkish authorities ignored the issue. He stated that rather than focusing on new construction, the government “abandoned problematic buildings to their fate.”
In addition, the urbanization ministry did not respond to questions regarding its approach to problematic buildings or the number of recently demolished structures that benefited from the amnesty.
The Trend Garden was built more than two decades ago, in the late 1990s, in accordance with a typical Turkish real estate agreement in which one party contributes the land and another takes over construction, while the two divide up the units.
Bahattin Dogan, a structure project worker from Malatya who is in his 70s, let Reuters know that he did the development. According to Bulent Yeroglu, his family acquired the land. Yeroglu, a 59-year-old civil engineer, said he also designed the building’s structure, using bricks for the infills and steel-reinforced concrete for the frame.
Both men claimed that they had strictly adhered to all regulations. That could not be independently verified by Reuters.
A satellite image from 2010 and architects’ drawings of the original structure, as well as building permits from 1996 that Reuters later saw, show that the building had originally had 12 apartments on six floors above and an attic.
One specialist in forensic engineering, Eduardo Fierro of California-based BFP Engineers, stated that the building appeared to have “a reasonably well-engineered frame” when presented with the drawings. However, Fierro claimed that the ground floor had a so-called “soft story,” or inherent weakness, with a higher ceiling and fewer walls or partitions to accommodate the commercial space. He and several other experts consulted by Reuters agreed that without additional information, it was impossible to determine whether remodeling contributed to the building’s collapse. Reuters did not have any proof that the remodelling contributed to the disaster.
Yeroglu claimed that he acquired the commercial space, which he had previously divided into two spaces and sold to two pharmacies more than a decade prior. According to Reuters, neither pharmacist made any modifications to the building and instead acquired the commercial space after it was divided.
Dogan, a building contractor, said he sold the 12 apartments to Aslan, one of the people the government officials said had been arrested, in the middle of 2018.
Because the building’s ownership changed during the remodelling into 42 units, Reuters was unable to determine whether Aslan or another individual was in charge.
According to a municipal official, the renovation was carried out without requesting permission, which, in the opinion of him and other specialists in local building, should have been sought for such a transformation. After reviewing the building records in the Yesilyurt district of Malatya, the official stated, “There is no trace of an application.”
The official went on to say that if a request had been made, it would probably have been turned down because the municipality generally won’t let older buildings with “tired” structures be remodeled.
Regarding the building’s registration history, a spokesperson for the Yesilyurt district municipality, where Trend Garden was situated, declined to comment.
What is clear is that the urbanization service gave acquittal choices in December 2019 “based on data given by the candidate” for 42 condos at the location of the Pattern Nursery, as per 42 reprieve archives seen by Reuters.
Reuters looked at land registry records and found that Trend Yurt, a company from Malatya, used the amnesty decisions to get the building’s deed in November 2020.
According to corporate records, Aslan has been Trend Yurt’s majority owner and manager since March 2020.
According to the two government officials, Sefa Gulfirat, who founded Trend Yurt in 2018, and Yeroglu, the civil engineer who designed the building’s structure, were among those arrested as well.
During his interview prior to his arrest, Yeroglu stated that he believed the building’s collapse was caused by structural damage sustained during renovation.
Ozgur Akkas, Yeroglu’s attorney when he was arrested, said that Yeroglu would argue that he didn’t have to do anything because he was a civil engineer and didn’t have to. When contacted by Reuters, one of Yeroglu’s relatives said that the civil engineer had carefully designed the structure, including the commercial area, and denied that the building had any inherent flaws.
Karadogan, Aslan’s attorney, is also on the side of Gulfirat. In addition, the attorney declined to speak on behalf of Gulfirat.
According to Anil Ozhan, whose family owns a pharmacy in one of the commercial spaces on the ground floor, and other locals, the serviced apartments opened in the latter half of 2021 after further renovations transformed the attic into a seventh floor with a cafeteria. The Trend Garden Residence posted a photo of the building in late 2021 that shows it after these renovations, including a full-height, glass-fronted seventh floor, blue and ochre trim, and the company’s name.
The pharmacist believed that the remodeling had been thoroughly evaluated prior to the amnesty being granted, despite Ozhan’s assertion that he was aware that the building had benefited from the zoning amnesty. He stated, “I’d be mad if I heard it wasn’t.”
According to closed-circuit television footage, the snow-covered ground surrounding the Trend Garden began shaking violently at 4.17 a.m. on Feb. 6.
A construction company manager named Onur Gencler was sleeping on the sixth floor. After he realized what was going on, he grabbed his phone and pulled two beds together before lying between them covered in comforters.
He claimed that the building shook for a considerable amount of time before collapsing in a matter of seconds, plunging him into darkness.
Gencler stated, “I thought I was dead.” I didn’t realize I was alive until I turned on my phone and saw the picture of my wife and son.
Gencler was rescued from beneath a concrete slab with minor injuries about 90 minutes later by his boss, Mehmet Kaya, and colleagues who had rushed to the location.
Kaya said they found his 34-year-old cousin Fatma, who was also staying at the serviced apartment building, after six hours of searching in heavy snow.
