More than a hundred detained while investigating the collapse of buildings in Turkey

On Monday thousands of buildings collapsed in Turkey that theoretically should have withstood a 7.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
14 February 2023 Tuesday 03:29
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More than a hundred detained while investigating the collapse of buildings in Turkey

On Monday thousands of buildings collapsed in Turkey that theoretically should have withstood a 7.7-magnitude earthquake. Shocked, the Turks are torn between impotence and rage, but have already begun to look for culprits. According to the state agency Anadolu, more than a hundred people have been arrested in the ten affected provinces and the Ministry of Justice has ordered the creation of an investigation unit and the appointment of prosecutors to prosecute builders and others responsible for buildings that did not comply with the regulations.

The first face was put on Friday, with his arrest, by the builder of the building that has swallowed more than 750 people, in Antakya.

Hüseyin Yalçin Coşkun's flight between Antalya and Istanbul was detected by the police and, when he was about to take another plane to Podgorica (Montenegro), the police caught up with him. The charges are not clear, but the Turks have applauded that Çoskun cannot leave the country and remains in the police station. Meanwhile, between 500 and 600 people – after discounting those rescued, alive or dead – are still trapped in the Rönesans residence, the twelve-story tome where Çoskun sold them one of its 250 “luxury apartments”, with a large community pool. One of the neighbors, now also buried, would be the Ghanaian international of Hatayspor, Christian Atsu. Although the building, which fell flat instead of collapsing, has brought several joys to rescuers and families, the limit of survival is being reached.

La Vanguardia spoke on Thursday in front of the damaged building with the relative of a victim. “My sister lived on the top floor, the one with the easiest access, but unfortunately she is on the side that the building fell towards,” he said. “Actually there were three united blocks. First the one in the middle fell and then another and another”. At the time of the visit, the Istanbul firefighters and the volunteers of the AKUT association were working in high spirits.

Under the symbolic hunting of the builders, still incipient, hides irritation with power. Everyone knows that these (many of them from the Black Sea coast, like President Erdogan's parents) are the nerve of the Justice and Development Party. Especially after the fall from grace of the Fethullah Gülen brotherhood, very present in the small and medium-sized industry around Kayseri, formerly the other leg of the party. The construction companies have not only made loads of money during Erdogan's two decades – which have meant a great leap forward in infrastructure – but they are going to continue to earn it with the titanic reconstruction that is coming.

The Turks are tormented by the feeling that part of this enrichment could have been at the cost of lowering the quality of the materials, circumventing anti-seismic regulations and bribing inspectors. Before the 1999 earthquake, a license from the local authorities was sufficient. Mandatory supervision by external professionals was then introduced. Then, in 2018, the AKP went a step further by prohibiting the supervising engineer from being chosen by the construction company itself. What Erdogan has not changed are the amnesties. Periodically there is a regularization of infringing homes in exchange for a fine, the amount of which is theoretically allocated to anti-seismic initiatives. The more accommodative point out that if all owners were forced to adopt the latest anti-seismic measures, half of Turkey's housing stock would have to be demolished.

The detained builder has had an unexpected defender, Lütfu Savas, mayor of the metropolitan region for the secularist Republican People's Party, who has said that Çoskun is "an idealist, who surely played by the rules" and that "you cannot blame from an earthquake to anyone”.