It was February 6, 2023, that day a particularly violent earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing nearly 60,000 people, the vast majority on the Turkish side. One of the worst natural disasters in the history of the 21st century. An assessment partly due to the poor quality of construction, many buildings did not comply with the anti-seismic standards in force. This Friday, October 27, an entrepreneur was even sentenced to 856 years in prison.
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96 people died after the collapse of the 14-story building where they lived in Adana, less than 200 kilometers from the epicenter. Only one resident survived.
The city had been relatively spared from the tremors, but the investigation revealed numerous irregularities in the construction of the building, from the columns supposed to support the building to the quality of the concrete used.
The man fled the same day to the Turkish part of the island of Cyprus before surrendering to the authorities. His exemplary sentence of more than 800 years in prison is at the height of the emotion aroused by the earthquake, like him more than 250 people were arrested in the weeks following the disaster.
Entrepreneurs, developers, inspectors… But almost no civil servant, no political leader, no local elected official, yet they too are singled out for having granted permits with all their might.
The man convicted this Friday also defended himself by asserting that the construction had been approved by the authorities. But in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, there is clearly no question of pointing out the responsibilities of those in power.
Also readEarthquake: the solidity of buildings questioned in Türkiye, first arrests in the sector