Blame for high quake toll turns to shoddy Turkish developers

Turkey’s social media users are calling for the heads of property developers.

Search and rescue efforts continue on collapsed buildings in Hatay, Turkey, on Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

Their mugshots are everywhere: a Turkish developer arrested while trying to flee the country and two colleagues connected to a luxurious apartment tower that crumbled in last Monday’s disastrous quake.

The traumatised country’s ­social media users are calling for their heads. Turkish officials are turning them into the focus of public outrage at the shoddy business dealings that appear to have contributed to the disaster’s almost unfathomable scale.

And architects view the Ronesans tower’s collapse as a symbol of Turkey’s inability to maintain building standards that could have dramatically reduced the toll.

Officials have responded to the outrage by announcing a rapid ­series of investigations and arrests linked to the construction and ­development business. Three people were put behind bars by Sunday and seven more have been ­detained, including two developers who were trying to flee to the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Turkey’s justice ministry has ­issued warrants for 114 more people and launched 134 investigations.

The problem for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government – in power for the past 20 years – is that the Ronesans case is far from unique.

Turkey has built towers across faultlines and swaths of earthquake-prone regions that have been bracing for a major jolt for years.

Erdogan has responded to the anger by arguing that no one could have been prepared to deal with Turkey’s “worst disaster in history”.

But the waves of arrests and investigations represent a marked change in attitude towards an ­industry that has helped transform Turkey’s underdeveloped regions while enjoying a profitable boom.

Six months passed before Turkey arrested the first suspect in the wake of the 1999 quake in which more than 17,000 people died in the country’s northwest regions near Istanbul.

Officials eventually opened 2100 investigations against developers of collapsed buildings. They did not lead to much.

A general amnesty in December 2000 resulted in 1800 of those cases being dropped. The courts found fault in only 110 cases.

The country has adopted a ­series of buildings standards and regulations modelled on those of California, but engineers and ­architects say most of Turkey’s builders manage to work their way around existing codes.

“On paper, the standards are respected, with contracts awarded to private companies responsible for controlling them,” Istanbul ­architect Aykut Koksal said.

But he stressed that developers often strike private deals with companies in charge of conducting the inspections. He said this ­dilutes enforcement and gives ­developer much leeway to cut costs.

AFP