Cyprus Mail ( South) reports on the sentencing of a Turkish apartment owner following his attempt to avoid responsibility for the deaths of ninety-six people who were tenants in a block of flats he owned. The building collapsed in the February 2023 earthquake. As did many other buildings, of course. However, as the file photo shows not all structures in a given area collapsed and the assumption is that the difference is down to lack of adherence to structural standards. In Adana, the city in question, only eleven apartment buildings collapsed.
An arrest warrant was issued for the owner but he had anticipated this and had flown to Northern Cyprus on the day of the quake. He then attempted to transfer $990,000 US, €890,000 and 500,000 Turkish lira out of Türkiye and tried to purchase an apartment in Nicosia. He was captured within a week and returned to Türkiye where he was convicted and sentenced to 62 concurrent life sentences.
It’s difficult to feel great sympathy for the man, although the Cyprus Mail’s heading - Owner of Collapsed Building Given 865 Years in Jail After Trying to Flee to Cyprus - is a little gleefully dramatic. It takes a moment to realise that the sentences were concurrent - after a cartoon type mental image of a skeleton tied to the prison window bars.
But what the article doesn’t mention is that Türkiye collected a special earthquake tax for over twenty years following a major 1999 earthquake. The money was intended to improve standards so that future quakes caused less damage. However, it appears that much of it went on other government projects and construction companies were allowed to evade the new standards.
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