Buildings that were supposed to be Standing Collapsed due to Violation of Building Standards

News:

Anger is growing in Turkey that poor building enforcement has contributed to the collapse of many buildings during recent earthquakes, reports BBC News. The BBC has looked at examples of newly built blocks that collapsed during the latest disaster.

For example, one building in Malatya was built last year, and screenshots of an advertisement were circulated on social networks, which said that it was “built in accordance with the latest earthquake resistance requirements.” Now there is no trace of this announcement, but several people took photos and videos and posted them on the Internet.

Another recently built apartment building in the port city of Iskanderun was badly damaged. The building's construction company released an image showing that it was completed in 2019.

Another building opened in Antakya in 2019, as seen in the image confirmed by the BBC, the Guchlu Bahce complex was also heavily damaged by the earthquake.

Although the quakes were powerful, experts say the well-built buildings should have stood up.

Building standards have been tightened since previous disasters, most recently in 2018. Stricter safety standards were also introduced following the 1999 earthquake around the northwestern city of Izmit, which killed 17,000 people. The latest regulations require structures in earthquake-prone regions to use high-quality cement reinforced with steel bars. Columns and beams must be distributed in such a way as to effectively absorb the impact of earthquakes. However, these laws are poorly enforced.

The government periodically grants "building amnesties" - effectively legal duty exemptions - for buildings that are built without the required safety certificates. They have been adopted since the 1960s (most recently in 2018). Critics have long warned that such amnesties are fraught with disaster in the event of a major earthquake.

Up to 75,000 buildings in the quake-hit zone in southern Turkey have received a construction amnesty, according to Pelin Pinar Giritli-oglu, head of the Istanbul Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects of the Urban Planning Chamber. Just a few days before the latest disaster, Turkish media reported that a new bill was pending approval in Parliament that would grant additional amnesty for recent construction works.

Earlier this year, geologist Celal Senghor said imposing such building amnesties in a country riven by fault lines was tantamount to a "crime." (Source: BBC)

Comment:

These statements, although often heard from the pro-British opposition, are a very serious accusation against Erdogan and his party, who changed Turkey's dependence on England to dependence on the United States.

After all, the vicious practice of "construction amnesties" was accepted and repeatedly confirmed at the level of law by the Parliament of the Republic of Turkey, even despite the previous bitter experience of such destructive earthquakes.

But, in fact, the problem lies in the implementation of the capitalist system, where the authorities, despite the fact that they position themselves as elected by the people, serve the interests of representatives of big capital, who are not interested in anything other than extracting maximum benefits. Therefore, we see how the Turkish regime deliberately covers up violations by construction companies of all safety standards and norms. In pursuit of profit, they save on production costs as much as possible, using low-quality, but cheaper materials, or generally ignoring the mandatory construction technologies in seismic zones.

In fact, the adoption by the Turkish regime of another "construction amnesty" is the distribution of indulgences to construction companies, exempting them from liability for future ones. This is a crime that is even worse and more dangerous than fraud and corruption. After all, if an ordinary amnesty is a decision taken by the state to mitigate or release from punishment for already committed crimes, then the tragic consequences of neglecting building standards will manifest themselves after the perpetrators are forgiven for the offenses committed. Tens of thousands of families, deceived by advertising, bought apartments in these “castles in the sand” with their last savings, which became a death trap for them.

Turkey's ruling regime, whose fault is not limited to incompetence and negligence, is a direct accomplice in this crime. After all, the adoption at the state level of the so-called. "construction amnesty" indicates that they knew about all the violations committed during construction. However, so that the owners of construction companies would not lose their profits, they did not force them to demolish low-quality buildings, but allowed them to sell without warning citizens of the danger that threatened them.

O Allah, get rid of the Islamic Ummah in general, and the Muslims of Turkey in particular, from rulers who put concern for their well-being and wealth above concern for their wards.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Mustafa Amin
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Ukraine