Turkey’s rising death toll following Monday’s two earthquakes has raised questions about how poorly enforced building standards are in a country whose economy has long relied on the housing sector to spur growth.
Turkey has introduced new building codes that require new construction to be earthquake-resistant, not least after the 1999 Izmit earthquake that killed more than 17,000 people, but these laws are often poorly enforced in a country where more than half of all buildings are being built illegally. This is reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, which was reviewed by Al-Arabiya.net.
While many experts pointed to the intensity of the two earthquakes, their relatively shallow depth, and the type of earthquake caused by the so-called East Anatolian Fault Strike due to its destructive power, others saw evidence of poor design that caused some buildings to collapse catastrophically.
“The number one factor is the quality of construction,” Ross Stein, president of disaster modeling firm Templar, told Scientific American just after the quake. “The quality of construction precedes all other causes of disaster.”
In turn, a geologist and disaster management expert from the Bournemouth University Disaster Management Center, Dr Henry Pang, said: “Some buildings just collapsed to the ground, while many others collapsed.” [متعددة] Decks are like a deck of cards. This indicates that most of the buildings did not have the appropriate characteristics to ensure stability during an earthquake.”
Professor Yang Ming, professor of seismology and rock physics at the University of Edinburgh, echoed this view, saying: “Looking at some of the photographs of damaged buildings, it is clear that most of them were not designed to withstand very strong earthquakes. It is clear that many apartment buildings survived the so-called “pancake collapse”.
He continued: “This happens when the walls and floors are not well connected to each other, and each floor collapses vertically down into the lower floor, leaving a pile of concrete slabs with barely any gaps between them. This means that the chances of survival for anyone inside are very slim.” .
He made his opinion on photographs of destroyed buildings adjacent to other buildings with minor damage, which indicates the use of poor-quality materials and evasive compliance with building codes in some buildings.
After an earthquake in 2011 that claimed hundreds of lives, then-Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed poor construction for the high death toll, saying: “Municipalities, contractors and leaders must now see that their negligence amounted to murder.”
The country’s architects and urban planners have long warned that building codes related to seismic activity are not being properly enforced and have been undermined by the Erdogan government’s controversial amnesty for illegal construction, which has generated about $3 billion in revenue for Turkey.
“These extraordinary destructions continue to repeat misguided city policies and politically motivated decisions, such as the 2018 county amnesty law,” said Professor Pelin Pinar Geritlioglu, head of the Istanbul branch of the Federation of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects.
At the time of the amnesty, building experts in Turkey warned that retroactively licensing illegal buildings for a fee would have dire consequences.
“This will mean turning our cities, especially Istanbul, into cemeteries,” Cemal Goekce, head of the Chamber of Civil Engineers, said in 2019.
“Either it was completely unauthorized, or more floors were built than originally planned, but they gave an amnesty to all buildings. It is very dangerous,” he added.
Sameer Bagain, Professor of Planning and Sustainability Systems at the Kent School of Architecture and Planning, warns that even with effective building codes as legislation, people will continue to do what they can get away with if there is no effective enforcement.
And even if you have architects and civil engineers [يقدمون توصياتهم الخاصة] The question remains whether they were heard.
