Turkey Targets Developers After Earthquake, Orders Arrests

A photo of a property developer arrested while trying to escape from Istanbul is a symbol of outrage in Turkey by the construction mafia, accused of collapsing thousands of buildings during an earthquake a week ago.

Residential complex “Renaissance” (Renaissance) was built in Antakya, in the south Turkey, had eight floors and 250 apartments. It was built ten years ago and even had a swimming pool.

Presented as a luxurious setting, the tower collapsed on top of its occupants.

This building is one of the thousands that collapsed after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit last Monday morning, with a balance of only Turkeyover 30,000 deaths.

Faced with growing outrage, reported in the press and spread through social media, Turkish authorities have quickly responded with dozens of arrests and arrest warrants, the number of which is multiplying.

On Sunday, ten people were already in custody, including two property developers who tried to flee to Georgia, while 114 people were on the run, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said.

The fate of the Reneisans residence has become a symbolic case of abuse that has been reported for a long time.

violations

Another case is related to the Isias Hotel in Adiyaman, where 35 members of the youth volleyball delegation of Northern Cyprus were killed.

Several witnesses told NTV that the hotel was closed due to “construction violations” but has reopened.

“I want these people to be tried, they are murderers,” said a relative of the victim.

The witness said that he saw the walls break as if they were sheets of paper.

The response of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which is campaigning ahead of the May 14 general election, is unprecedented.

So far, corrupt builders and entrepreneurs have managed to get by despite repeated warnings from well-known engineers and architects.

In 1999, when another earthquake killed 17,000 people in the northwest Turkeyin the province of Kocaeli, six months elapsed before the first arrest was made.

The Milliet newspaper headlined “A total of eight arrests and 17,000 deaths.”

Subsequently, more than 2,000 cases were brought against the developers of the affected houses, but 1,800 of them ended without any punishment due to an amnesty declared in 2000.

Finally, in 2007, most of the perpetrators took advantage of the prescription of crimes.

private control

In a statement, the builder of the Renaissance residence, Mehmet Yasar Coskun, denied the accusations against him and his partners.

“I don’t know why the building collapsed. All the permits were issued after the municipality and the controlling company carried out investigations,” he said.

The permission for this residence was signed in 2021 by the Ekinciler district in Khatai.

The then mayor, Seyfettin Yeral, confirmed to the T24 news portal that he had handed over the permit, but said that “the control was exercised by a private company.”

“We didn’t have the staff for it anyway,” he said.

Turkey It has adopted a set of rules and regulations copied from those in California that are revised periodically, most recently in 2018.

But according to engineers and architects interviewed this week by AFP, builders are ignoring most of them.

“On paper, the rules are followed and contracts are delegated to private companies in charge of control,” explained architect Aykut Köksal.

“Every builder gives up his own,” he explained, referring to the fact that control is a friendly negotiation between the two parties, too lax for businessmen.

(According to AFP)

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