Thread: Erdogan boasted of developers dodging building codes in earthquake epicentre

The bloke is scum, lets hope this results in him being kicked out. There was UCL earthquake expert in radio 4 on the day the quake happened when death toll was 1,500 stating that Turkey's building control and standards were appalling and the death toll was going to be huge... he was right.



The Turkish president’s lax enforcement is being cited as a factor in the high death toll which is expected to rise much higher than 37,000

Videos of Recep Tayyip Erdogan boasting about helping developers to dodge building codes have resurfaced, fuelling anger in Turkey at the high death toll from last week’s massive earthquake.


While campaigning ahead of local elections in 2019, the Turkish president told rallies in the southern provinces that legislation passed by his party had allowed buildings with construction violations to be certified without developers bringing them up to code.


Lax enforcement of building codes is now being cited as a factor in the high death toll which is expected to rise much higher than the official figures of 37,000 in southern Turkey and Syria.


Following a massive earthquake in Izmit outside Istanbul in 1999 which killed over 17,000 people and damaged about 20,000 buildings, Turkey introduced new regulations to strengthen structures near fault lines, introducing new building codes in 2007 and 2018.


These codes were undermined however by a 2018 amnesty law which allowed developers and builders to licence subpar buildings simply by paying a fine, a scheme which netted the government £2.6 billion, according to the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization.


A 2019 video (eng subs) of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip #Erdoğan in which he boasts about the construction amnesty granted in the earthquake-stricken southeastern #Kahramanmaraş province has gone viral on social media in #Turkey (via @DuvarEnglish) #TurkeyQuake #deprem pic.twitter.com/MyRRfXn82O


— Makis Mylonas (@MylonasMakis) February 13, 2023
“We solved the problem of 144,156 citizens of Maras with zoning amnesty,” Mr Erdogan told a rally in Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of last Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake.


Mr Erdogan made similar boasts in Hatay and Malatya, suggesting that the law had affected more than 438,000 property owners.


With building contractors linked to collapsed buildings being arrested, critics have decried what they say is government scapegoating.


On the 2013 anniversary of the Izmit earthquake President Erdogan tweeted: “Buildings kill, not earthquakes. We need to learn to live with earthquakes and take measures accordingly.”


“If there is one person responsible for this, it is Erdogan,” said Turkey’s main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Erdogan boasted of developers dodging building codes in earthquake epicentre

As if western autistic building regulations would have prevented any of this carnage. Of course it would have prevented some. But Turkey is a poor country especially out in the rural areas.

Autistic regulations is just not practical in the 3rd world.

Im not defending ErDOGan. But it isn't like this opposition politician would have had a different policy. Hey we are gonna bulldoze everyone's dwelling that isn't up to EU standards. Gonna win a lot of elections like that.

For all his nationalist and pro-islamic bluster, at the end of the day he's just another thieving baldy orange cunto type.