Turkish authorities have arrested 12 contractors and others from the construction industry for allegedly responsible for the collapse of the buildings they erected. This is reported by the French news agency AFP and The Guardian Saturday. They are accused of not following building regulations or making construction errors.
The arrests took place Friday and Saturday. Among the twelve detainees is the contractor of a series of collapsed high-rise luxury flats in Hatay province. Turkish police arrested the man at an airport in Istanbul, from where he allegedly tried to flee the country.
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Dozens more arrests are likely to follow. On Saturday, the Diyarbakir province issued arrest warrants for 29 suspects. Turkish justice has ordered local prosecutors to set up investigative agencies for ‘earthquake crimes’.
There is a lot of anger in Turkey about the poor construction of some buildings. Even new, luxury flats collapsed in the past week, presumably due to building regulations not being followed. The question is how that will affect the elections in May. Turkish citizens paid tens of billions of dollars in earthquake taxes over the past 23 years, but it’s unclear what happened to that money, while many major construction companies have ties to President Erdogan’s government.
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