Ankara Amnesty
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There is the risk of scapegoating in arresting contractors whose shoddy buildings collapsed in the earthquake, but for the most part they seem culpable. There’s a massive policy failure here as well:
Turkish officials on Saturday began detaining dozens of contractors they blamed for some of the building collapses in Monday’s devastating earthquake, as anger swelled over the government’s slow rescue effort and the death toll in the country surpassed 24,000.
More than 100 people were detained across the 10 provinces affected by the quake, the state-run Anadolu News Agency reported on Saturday, as the Turkish Justice Ministry ordered officials in those provinces to set up “Earthquake Crimes Investigation Units.” It also directed them to appoint prosecutors to bring criminal charges against all the “constructors and those responsible” for the collapse of buildings that failed to meet existing codes, which had been put in place after a similar disaster in 1999.
The arrests were the first steps by the Turkish state toward identifying and punishing people who may have contributed to the deaths of their fellow citizens in the quake. Across the earthquake zone, residents expressed outrage at what they contended were corrupt builders who cut corners to fatten their profits and the government’s granting of “amnesties” to builders who put up apartment complexes that failed to meet the new codes.
In the Saraykint neighborhood of Antakya, residents pointed to shoddy workmanship in a newly built luxury building of 14 floors, with some 90 apartments, that had collapsed on itself.
[…]
His neighbor, Mehmet Celik, 38, a middle-school teacher, said the big problem was so-called amnesties for buildings that were not built according to code, which the government occasionally issues to effectively legalize such buildings. It’s good politics, because no one wants a building or apartment they had paid for to be condemned, he said. But then the building is vulnerable when a quake hits.
I wouldn’t say granting amnesties to builders who violate building codes in ways that put residents at risk is a good idea. But granting “amnesties” to the buildings is a catastrophe, in this case literally.