Inside Turkey's construction industry

Brut America

The recent earthquakes across Syria and Turkey caused at least 35,000 deaths and left a trail of destruction.   In Turkey, many construction experts are now asking why the country wasn’t better prepared …  Thanks to Pelin Pınar Giritlioğlu.

Transcript

00:00If it had been designed with urban functions,

00:04of course, the dose of this collapse would have been much less.

00:09There are very big earthquakes in Japan, more than seven.

00:12How do the structures survive here?

00:14When Turkey and Syria were hit with two devastating earthquakes,

00:17nearly 25,000 buildings collapsed across the region,

00:20according to the Turkish government.

00:22Many are now questioning why Turkey,

00:24a country prone to earthquakes, was not more prepared.

00:27Some experts are blaming the lack of regulation

00:29in Turkey's construction industry

00:31and how this may have exasperated the devastation

00:33caused by the earthquake.

00:35Of course, it was a huge earthquake.

00:37In fact, two huge earthquakes came one after the other

00:39in an unexpected way.

00:41But it could have been possible to prevent all of this

00:44on a large scale.

00:46Turkey sits on top of two fault lines.

00:48In 1999, after another devastating earthquake,

00:52new building regulations were passed.

00:54But construction experts now say

00:56these weren't properly enforced.

00:58The earthquake in 1999 was actually a breaking point here.

01:01Because some social agreements were made there.

01:05One of them was to prepare the cities for the earthquake.

01:09We, all the academics, the vocational schools,

01:12the civil society organizations,

01:13participated in these studies.

01:14I think it was very useful.

01:16A commission worked.

01:17Ten separate books came out of here.

01:19According to Dr. Girit Loğlu,

01:21builders and promoters are not the only ones at fault.

01:24She told me about İmarafı,

01:26which translates to construction amnesties.

01:28These laws essentially grant pardons

01:30to construction companies or individual owners

01:33whose buildings don't abide by certain building codes,

01:35protecting them from facing monetary or legal repercussions.

01:39The government has promoted these amnesties

01:41as a way to support the construction boom in the country,

01:44as well as to appeal to property owners.

01:46İmarafı was used as a tool of populism.

01:49Before the election period,

01:51a lot of amnesties were issued.

01:52There are a lot of İmarafı in our country.

01:55More than 20, almost 25.

01:58All of this has already caused

01:59the cities to become extremely unhealthy.

02:04A 2018 report from the Turkish Environment

02:06and Urbanization Ministry,

02:08quoted by the BBC,

02:09showed that over half of all buildings in Turkey

02:12have been built in violation of legal regulations.

02:15Aside from the devastating impact on buildings,

02:17wider transport infrastructure

02:19was also widely affected by the earthquake.

02:21In the hard-hit Hatay province,

02:23the only airport of the region suffered extensive damage.

02:26But if you're building an airport on Sisfayet,

02:29yes, you can't get there.

02:31If you're building impassable roads,

02:33yes, you can't get there.

02:34If you don't have a disaster evacuation route in the city,

02:37yes, you can't get there.

02:39If you don't have hospitals,

02:41you can't raise the injured.

02:43But it's not the planners who make these decisions.

02:46The problem is here.

02:46It's the politicians who make these decisions.

02:48In response to mounting criticism,

02:50Turkish officials announced that they issued

02:52113 arrest warrants in relation to the construction

02:56of the buildings that collapsed during the earthquakes.

03:26If you choose to continue the system

03:28based on the same amount of capital,

03:31you will reach today's result.

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