[ Corner-cutting contractors sold buildings as safe that then
collapsed. But just as culpable are officials who offered permits and
lax controls]
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THE TURKEY/SYRIA EARTHQUAKE WAS A NATURAL DISASTER – MURDEROUS
CORRUPTION CAUSED SO MANY DEATHS  
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Constanze Letsch
February 15, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Corner-cutting contractors sold buildings as safe that then
collapsed. But just as culpable are officials who offered permits and
lax controls _

A woman sitting amid the rubble of her house in Kahramanmaraş,
Turkey, 14 February 2023., Photograph: Nir Elias/Reuters

 

The death toll from the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
has now surpassed 37,000
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Tens of thousands of people are still missing, and social media feeds
are awash with examples of newly built residential complexes that have
collapsed like sandcastles, burying occupants under the rubble. Many
of these buildings were sold as luxury housing “compliant with the
latest earthquake safety standards”.

Some of the contractors responsible have tried to flee Turkey.
Warrants have been issued for more than 130 people
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alleged breaches of safety codes, and several construction company
owners have been arrested
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Turkey’s justice minister, Bekir Bozdağ, vowed that “all those
who are at fault will be held accountable”.

But this kind of greed and blatant profiteering are not solitary
crimes. These residential complexes could not have been built without
state-issued building permits and licences, without the approving
signatures of nominally independent building inspectors, and without
the necessary reports from laboratories doing quality control of
construction materials. They could not have gone ahead without the
government’s many changes to construction and real estate
legislation, all meant to facilitate the bloated growth of a
destructive and insatiable construction sector.

This is not the first time in Turkey
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earthquakes have exposed a corrupt, incapable government. However, the
AKP has been in power for over 20 years. It had the time and the means
to tackle a notoriously fraudulent construction sector, rein in
irresponsible contractors and provide safe, healthy housing for all
citizens in an earthquake-prone country. It chose not to.

Instead, it focused on massive infrastructure and construction
projects as the main motor of economic growth, no matter the societal
and environmental costs. From 2004 on, the government passed
substantive legal and institutional reforms in the fields of
construction, real estate, local governance and housing finance. This
included new extensive powers for metropolitan and district
municipalities to implement urban renewal projects, to establish
partnerships with private companies and to sell publicly owned land
and assets to private developers.

As a result, tens of thousands of people – often those who were
marginalised or poor – have been evicted from their homes.
Communities and solidarity networks have been destroyed to make space
for luxury housing and other high-profit real estate. Urban renewal
did little to make housing resilient against earthquakes and other
disasters. According to numbers published by the environment and
urbanisation ministry in 2018, more than half of the buildings in
Turkey – equivalent to almost 13m buildings
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violate construction and safety regulations. Local politicians and
experts have warned for years that cities and towns would not
withstand violent tremors, but their voices have been ignored.

And not only that. While the state authorities encouraged unfettered
development and construction, turning a blind eye to irregularities,
the AKP critically weakened all independent expert oversight. Trade
chambers were constantly disparaged as spoilsports, traitors, even
terrorists for exposing construction flaws and opening court cases
against problematic or dangerous projects. Laws passed in 2011 and
2013
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the latter likely petty revenge for the involvement of trade chamber
leaders in the Gezi protests
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specifically excluded chamber professionals such as civil engineers,
architects and urban planners from the process of approving and
inspecting construction projects. Architect Mücella Yapıcı, lawyer
Can Atalay and urban planner Tayfun Kahraman, all prominent members of
the Union of Chambers of Turkish Architects and Engineers (TMMOB) and
longstanding critics of the AKP government, have all been thrown in
jail
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bogus conspiracy charges.

Meanwhile, the government has left its responsibility to ensure safe
and regulated construction to the forces of the free market. Building
inspections have been privatised, prioritising profit over expertise.
Contractors not given to pangs of conscience and engineers willing to
work for peanuts make inspections nothing more than a formality. This
constant cutting of corners has led to an increase of illegally built
and unsafe buildings. It’s a deadly race to the bottom: long-term
unemployed engineers and architects have begun to hire out their
university diplomas to the highest bidders, often subcontractors who
want to cut through the red tape and cheaply finalise construction
projects without the “obstacle” of an expert opinion.

Furthermore, existing buildings have benefited from so-called
construction amnesties. First widely applied to informal housing in
1984 and framed as a “gift” from the government to its citizens,
these official pardons have provided (for a fee paid to the
government) permits for all illegally built or altered structures. The
latest such amnesty was passed in 2018, in the run-up to general
elections. Lauded by the AKP as the biggest construction pardon in the
history of the republic, it encompassed almost 7.4m buildings and
yielded 24.19bn TL
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the time about $4.2bn) in government revenue. According to the
environment and urbanisation ministry, this money is supposed to be
used for making buildings more earthquake-proof.

The government argues that these amnesties provide low-income and
small-scale homeowners with the legal means to hook up their houses to
municipal infrastructure, but critics say that they promote the
construction of unsafe and unregulated housing. Construction amnesties
do not distinguish between a one-storey _gecekondu
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an 18-storey luxury housing estate.

Up to 294,000 buildings
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the region affected by last week’s earthquakes have been given
construction amnesties, according to numbers made accessible by the
urban planner Buğra Gökçe, a senior Istanbul municipality official.
At the time of the earthquakes on 6 February, another amnesty draft
law was pending parliamentary approval.

How many of the deadly buildings were included in the amnesty is still
unclear. While rescue teams are still digging for survivors, the
search for evidence has begun. In the aftermath of the earthquakes,
experts have warned, it is imperative that independent legal
committees collect samples of concrete, beams and steel support rods
from collapsed buildings, and to demand the buildings’ permits and
licensing paperwork from municipalities, as well as proof that
subcontractors have adhered to all current building safety standards
and regulations. Lawyers dispatched to the earthquake zone have
already alerted colleagues and the public to attempts to make such
evidence disappear.

If all those responsible for this disaster are to be held to account,
it is this net of corruption, nepotism and greed that has to be
untangled first.

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_Constanze Letsch is a former Turkey correspondent for the Guardian
and has recently finished a PhD on urban renewal in a central Istanbul
neighbourhood_

* earthquake
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* Turkey
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* Syria
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* death
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* corruption
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