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Outrage is growing in Turkey over the fact that poor enforcement of regulations contributed to the collapse of many buildings during Monday’s earthquakes.
The BBC has verified cases of newly built buildings that collapsed.
A Malatya building (seen below) was completed last year and screenshots of an ad were circulating online saying it was “finished in accordance with the latest anti-seismic regulations”.
The text stated that the materials and workmanship used were of “first quality”.
There is no trace of this announcement anymore, but several people had taken photos and videos and posted them on the internet. The ad matches the style of other similar ones on the company’s website.
Another recently built apartment block in the port city of Iskenderun was also photographed and appears largely destroyed.
Before and after: a newly built apartment block in Iskanderun.
The construction company of this building published an image showing that it had been completed in 2019.
The BBC verified that the image of the destroyed building (right) matches the location of the block company’s publicity photo (left).
Another building that opened in Antakya in 2019 can also be seen destroyed in a BBC verified image.
image source, Twitter
Antakya’s Guclu Bahce complex was badly damaged by the quakes.
We have found a video of the inauguration ceremony of the housing complex, from November 2019, in which the owner of a construction company involved says: “The Guclu Bahce city project is special compared to others because of its location and construction qualities.”
Although the earthquakes were powerful, experts say that the buildings built correctly they should have been able to stand up.
“The peak intensity of this earthquake was violent, but not necessarily enough to bring down well-constructed buildings,” said David Alexander, Professor of Emergency Planning and Management at University College London.
“In most places, the level of shaking was less than the maximum, so we can conclude that, of the thousands of buildings that collapsed, almost all do not meet any reasonably expected seismic building code“.
Breach of construction regulations
Building regulations have been tightened in Turkey after previous disasters, including the most recent in 2018.
Tighter security regulations were also introduced after the 1999 earthquake around the northwestern city of Izmit, which killed 17,000 people.
The latest standards require that the structures of the seismic regions use high-quality concrete reinforced with steel bars. The columns and beams must also be distributed in such a way that they effectively absorb the impact of earthquakes.
image source, Getty Images
More than 50% of the buildings in Turkey have been built in violation of building regulations.
However, these laws have been misapplied.
“Part of the problem is that there is very little adaptation of the existing buildings, but also there is very little enforcement of building regulations in new construction,” said Professor Alexander.
The government has granted periodic “construction amnesties” – in effect, legal exemptions on payment of a fee – to structures built without the required safety certificates. They have been approved since the 1960s (the last one in 2018).
Critics have long warned that such amnesties pose a catastrophic risk in the event of a large earthquake.
image source, Getty Images
“Building amnesties” pose a catastrophic risk in the event of a major earthquake.
Up to 75,000 buildings in the earthquake-affected area of southern Turkey have received building amnesties, according to Pelin Pınar Giritlioğlu, head of the Istanbul Chamber of Urban Planners of the Union of Chambers of Engineers and Architects of Turkey.
A few days before the latest disaster, the Turkish media reported that a bill that would grant a new amnesty for recent construction works was pending parliamentary approval.
Geologist Celal Sengor declared earlier this year that approving this type of amnesty for construction in a country torn by geological faults amounts to a “crime”.
After a deadly earthquake struck the western province of Izmir in 2020, a report from the BBC Turkish service revealed that 672,000 buildings in Izmir had benefited from the last amnesty.
This same report cited that the Ministry of the Environment and Urban Planning had declared in 2018 that more than 50% of the buildings in Turkey – which is equivalent to almost 13 million buildings – had been built in violation of regulations.
We have contacted the Ministry of Environment and Town Planning for comment on building regulations in Turkey following the most recent earthquakes and they said the following: “No building built by our administration has collapsed. Damage assessment studies continue rapidly on the ground.”
Additional reporting by Olga Smirnova, Alex Murray, Richard Irvine-Brown, and Dilay Yalcin.
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