Turkey and the anger of the people affected by the earthquake / Who is responsible for the thousands of people who died in the earthquake?

According to Tejarat News, the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced that in March, the authorities will start the construction of 30,000 residential buildings in the earthquake-affected areas of Turkey. He said that these buildings will be built far from the fault lines and as soon as the damage assessment is finished.

He said that 98 percent of the buildings that collapsed in the earthquake, which became the most destructive disaster in Turkish history, were built before 1999. “Our goal is to complete the construction of a number of high-quality and safe buildings within a year to solve the housing problem throughout the earthquake-hit region of the country,” Erdogan said at Turkey’s crisis management headquarters in Ankara.

At the time of writing this report, the death toll in Turkey has exceeded 35,000 people, and in Syria, around 6,000 people have lost their lives due to the earthquake.

The political consequences of the February 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria have already begun. Recently, the Turkish authorities announced the arrest of the country’s housing developers following the residents’ protest about the low quality of the buildings, which led to the death of tens of thousands of people after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake. Although Erdogan has announced that these buildings will be built far from the fault lines, this area is still considered an earthquake-prone area, and due to the not very high quality of the previous buildings that all collapsed; It should be seen how resistant and standard the new houses are built.

Reporter ABC News who has been present at the scene of the earthquake for hours after the earthquake, and has prepared a report about these illegal constructions.

What punishment awaits the law-breaking housing developers in Turkey?

So far, at least two real estate developers have been arrested at the airport and accused by prosecutors of trying to flee the country. Yavuz Karakoş is the contractor of many destroyed buildings in Turkey’s Adyaman province. This city is one of the cities near the center of the earthquake, which suffered the biggest and most terrible damage in this incident.

Earlier it was also reported that at least 14 people accused of negligence, manslaughter and violation of construction laws have been arrested while Turkish people are demanding answers.

Karakosh was arrested while trying to escape to Georgia. Another arrested mass builder is the contractor of a 14-story luxury building in Hatay, Turkey, another hard-hit area.

Although the intensity of the earthquake was very high, but the non-compliance with the construction standards has provoked the anger of many. Some experts say that if these buildings were built properly, they should have remained in their place without damage.

Turkey’s crisis management headquarters has also said that the problem is partially caused by the lack of structural components. According to the ABC report, mostly only bricks were seen among the debris of the collapsed buildings, and these buildings were made only of bricks, and obviously strong components such as iron were not used in them to strengthen the building, or there were very few of them.

The crisis management headquarters also says that even when construction beams were found among the debris, their diameter was so small that they had virtually no effect on maintaining the strength of the building.

Therefore, here there is the issue of the quality of the building components used, which was less than the provisions of the regulations. Regulations that were supposed to guarantee that these buildings in earthquake-prone areas can withstand such an event. Of course, the issue of corruption should also be mentioned. Some of the builders of these buildings simply obtained permission to increase the floors and built taller buildings than the standard and used bribes to bypass the restrictions.

How serious is the Turkish government in dealing with this issue?

Dealing with the crimes of mass builders and focusing on the violations of these contractors is something that the Turkish authorities should do as soon as possible, because according to Erdogan, the people are angry about this situation and if this issue is not followed properly at the time of Turkey’s political vulnerability, the possibility of increasing There is citizen anger.

Some local people say that they used to go under the rubble to save their neighbors or relatives for a few days after the earthquake. This issue, along with the low quality of the buildings, has made the earthquake-affected people of this country desperate because they think that if the construction regulations were followed and the authorities had proper supervision of this issue, perhaps such terrible casualties would not have been left and so many lives would have been at risk. They did not fall.

Turkey is now only three months away from the presidential elections, and ironically, the cities affected by the earthquake were among the cities that mostly supported Erdogan, and now, despite these concerns, the government must try to prove its effectiveness to them.