Turkish Mayor Celebrates Zero Earthquake Deaths in His Town: ‘I Have Not Allowed Illegal Construction’

earthquake
David Lombeida/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Frances Martel

Erzin, Hatay province, a town of about 40,000 people, experienced no deaths, injuries, or building collapses despite being in the heart of earthquake-devastated east Turkey and continues to operate in a relatively normal state as of Wednesday.

Erzin’s mayor, Ökkeş Elmasoğlu of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has attributed the minimal damage in his town – some collapsed minarets on mosques and building damage that could suggest structural issues, but no collapses – to his administration’s strict adherence to building codes and refusal to forgive shady developers found attempting to circumvent them. The town capped the height of buildings and halted construction on projects that did not use appropriate materials or aimed to build structures too tall to survive earthquakes in recognition of the location of the town, close to the fault lines that caused last week’s earthquake.

Turkey and Syria experienced a devastating series of earthquakes on February 6, the first reaching 7.8 magnitude and at least one aftershock registering at 7.5 magnitude. At press time, the death toll in both countries has surpassed 40,000 people, over 35,000 of them believed to be in Turkey. The Syria casualty counts are believed to be significantly below the true number of injuries and deaths as northwestern Syria is far from dictator Bashar Assad’s centers of power, ruled in some places by Syrian Kurdish militias and by Arab jihadist groups in others.

Major population centers such as the cities of Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, and Hatay are among the most devastated communities, where entire buildings collapsed in seconds. As the first earthquake struck in the pre-dawn hours of a Monday, most people were home, resulting in thousands being killed by rubble or buried alive.

Outrage in Turkey has grown in the past week as seismologists and engineers suggest that the outrageous death toll could have been avoided if real estate developers followed the law and built earthquake-resistant buildings. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) has presided over a period of particular negligence regarding building codes, publicly announcing a national amnesty for developers in 2018 in which they could avoid repairing buildings that were not up to code by paying the government a fine. Erdogan insisted at the time the policy was necessary to keep the economy growing.

“It’s difficult to watch this tragedy unfold, especially since we’ve known for a long time that the buildings in the region were not designed to withstand earthquakes,” U.S. Geological Survey scientist David Wald said last week. “An earthquake this size has the potential to be damaging anywhere in the world, but many structures in this region are particularly vulnerable.”

As a result of this context, Erzin, how a safe haven surrounded by ruins, has become a rare positive example following the earthquake. Elmasoğlu, the mayor, confirmed this week that his town did not experience deaths or injuries in the earthquake, though residents, of course, endured the quake and many, especially children, suffered trauma.

In an interview this week, Elmasoğlu noted that the tallest building in his town is six stories tall, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.

“I have not allowed illegal construction in any way,” he explained. “Despite this, there were some who tried. Though we could not follow them at first as we did not have enough personnel, we later reported them to the prosecutor’s office and we took demolition decisions.”

In an interview with the news network TV5, Elmasoğlu joked that frustrated developers would joke to him, “are you the only decent man in this country?” when having their illegal plans rejected. He noted that, on one occasion, a relative of his in the real estate business received a fine for attempting an illegal construction and expressed shock as Elmasoğlu refused to waive the fine, shrugging, “there’s nothing I can do.”

“For my part, I have a very clear conscience, we did not allow illegal construction in any way. Of course, if you don’t allow it, there is someone who has found a way and somehow built illegal construction. There are sections where we have written penalties for illegal construction,” he explained. “If you cannot prevent illegal construction by one hundred percent, you can also cut it at a certain stage.”

Elmasoğlu himself explained that he lived in a one-story house and, while his experience of the earthquake was violent and terrifying, he and his family managed to run out of the house and escape any harm.

Elmasoğlu has been mayor since 2019, a longtime local attorney in the town, and belongs to the secularist CHP, the largest opposition party in the country. The CHP was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey and architect of the Armenian genocide. Despite being a much older and established party than Erdogan’s AKP, the CHP has largely failed to pose a significant challenge to AKP rule at the national level.

Following the earthquake, Erzin has lent itself to taking in refugees from neighboring destroyed communities and helping coordinate distribution of aid for humanitarian groups. Visiting the town in a report published on Wednesday, NBC News reported that local officials estimate Erzin is currently home to an estimated 20,000 displaced earthquake victims. Some who happened to be in Erzin when the earthquake struck do not yet know if they have a home to go back to.

Turkey is expected to hold presidential elections this year – scheduled for June, though Erdogan had suggested prior to the earthquakes that he could move them up to May – in which Erdogan has imprisoned his most prominent and popular opponents. Selahattin Demirtas, the former leader of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), has been in prison since 2017 and mounted an attempt at a presidential campaign in 2018. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP mayor of Istanbul, was arrested in December and sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly insulting public officials, cutting short a potential presidential run before it began.

The earthquake has raised poor construction and minimal enforcement of building codes as a campaign issue that could hurt Erdogan even in an election he has rigged by jailing his opposition.

“According to official estimates, 6,000 to 7,000 buildings collapsed on Monday. However strong, no earthquake could have caused this much damage if all buildings were up to standard,” civil engineer and Turkish Earthquake Retrofit Association President Sinan Turkkan told Qatar’s Al Jazeera on Friday.

Outrage within Turkey towards the government is growing, leading Erdogan to announce efforts to imprison building developers to make them pay for their negligence. As of this week, Turkish police claim to have arrested at least 130 building contractors for allegedly violating building codes in earthquake-hit areas. In a speech on Tuesday, Erdogan asserted, “collapsed buildings reminded the government of the need for stricter construction rules.”

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