Turkey digs out and asks: why was the damage this bad?

As Turkey digs out from a devastating earthquake, the country is asking: why was the damage so bad?

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, this is Plain English, where we use current events and trending topics to help you upgrade your English. By listening here, you can experience the world in your new language, at the right speed and with a lot of great support on our website, PlainEnglish.com.

I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and this is lesson number 554. You can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/554.

Coming up today: In 2013, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent a tweet that said this: “Buildings kill, not earthquakes.” He meant that strong and safe buildings should protect people from earthquakes, so the best defense against a big earthquake is to build solid, resistant buildings. It was good advice.

But Erdoğan’s government didn’t follow that advice. And now, ten years later, a major earthquake hit Turkey and killed tens of thousands of people under a rubble of badly-constructed buildings.

The expression we’ll talk about today is “bear the blame.” Let’s get started.

Turkey digs out and asks: why was it so bad?

Turkey sits along two major fault lines, making it vulnerable to earthquakes. In 1999, a big one hit in the Düzce region, not far from Istanbul. It killed about 18,000 people. And in the early hours of February 6 this year, 2023, another big one hit—this time in the country’s southeast. It was followed by thousands of aftershocks.

Officially, over 47,000 people died in Turkey and Syria in the February earthquakes. The number of dead and missing is still rising; other estimates have it much higher.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a force in Turkish politics for over a quarter of a century. For the last twenty years, he’s been either the president or prime minister. Before that, he was mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city.

Just weeks ago, Erdoğan’s grip on power seemed secure. But the earthquake may shake more than just the ground—it could shake up Turkey’s politics too. That’s because there are two major criticisms being leveled at the government after the earthquake. And there are national elections coming this spring.

The first criticism is that Turkey’s government was slow to send critical rescue equipment to the earthquake region. After the earthquake hit, many people were buried under the rubble; they were trapped inside collapsed buildings. When this happens, there is an essential window of just a few days to rescue anyone who is trapped.

Turkey’s government was slow to send cranes and other heavy machinery that was needed to help lift massive concrete slabs of collapsed buildings. This stood in contrast to the relatively quick response to the 1999 earthquake. This time, the affected areas waited days for a critical response from the army. This delay cost lives, as people were not rescued in time. Erdoğan himself admitted that the winter weather contributed to delays sending rescue material and equipment.

As bad as this was, though, it was an error of execution. The other criticism is far more devastating.

The earthquake has revealed that much of the country’s construction in recent years was not done up to code—and as a result, buildings collapsed when the earth shook, trapping people underneath.

Building codes were updated after the 1999 earthquake, and then were updated again five years ago. But planners say that contractors frequently submit legal plans when they seek initial approval, but then they don’t follow those plans during construction. And inspections of the final product are weak.

For example, concrete columns contribute to a building’s stability, but they also take up valuable space. After getting plans approved, some builders would narrow the width of the columns on lower floors to make more room for commercial space—but the lower floors are exactly where the columns do their hardest work.

In large buildings, concrete should be reinforced with steel rebar to make the concrete more stable. But many contractors would use less steel than required—or none at all—in the final construction.

None of this was a secret. It was well-known in Turkey that these kinds of construction shortcuts resulted in buildings that did not meet legal standards.

So in 2019, Turkey’s government issued a nationwide amnesty for builders, which legalized many tens of thousands of buildings that had not been built up to code, as long as the developers paid fines. The amnesty law forgave violations of the law in construction and made building owners responsible for safety in case of an earthquake.

Engineers, academics, and architects warned at the time this was dangerous and put people’s lives at risk. One professional organization issued a stark statement: “Zoning amnesty is an invitation to death,” they said.

The government thought otherwise. It said the amnesty was a key driver of economic growth; what it did not say out loud, though, is that the construction industry is a key political supporter of the ruling party. There are even videos of Erdoğan at the time boasting of “solving the problem” of bad construction by offering “zoning peace”—his word for the amnesty.

But many of the areas that got this zoning peace are anything but peaceful today. An estimated 85,000 buildings in the earthquake zone collapsed, including many that Erdogan claimed credit for legalizing. Entire cities were left without power and water in the frigid winter.

Turkey’s government has scrambled to defend its record. Erdoğan, in defending the amnesty, said that 98 percent of all buildings that collapsed in the earthquake zone were built before 1999—implicitly absolving himself of blame. Prominent architecture and engineering groups have called that estimate unrealistic, adding that it’s impossible to have made a credible estimate so quickly. Besides, satellite images show entire neighborhoods were constructed in the last two decades.

The government is also arresting property managers, contractors, and others they say are responsible for low-quality buildings. Since the amnesty placed building owners in charge of earthquake safety, building owners are subject to arrest. The justice ministry announced it would create an earthquake crimes investigation bureau.

The national government is getting much of the criticism in the immediate aftermath of this disaster, and it bears much of the blame. But a problem this big has many causes. Local governments, developers, planners, contractors, and building owners all share the blame for an industry that was rife with corruption.

The government will loudly hold contractors accountable for the role they, the contractors, played in the disaster. But it will be up to Turkey’s citizens to hold the many layers of government and society accountable for their part.

Well wishes to listeners in Turkey

There’s a lot of human devastation that’s just heartbreaking. But this is a part of the world with a long and rich history; there are historical sites going back centuries, covering past civilizations, that crumbled, too. Some can be restored, but probably not all of them.

We have a lot of listeners in Turkey—we even have some in Syria, but we have a lot in Turkey. So we certainly send our best wishes to anyone who lives in that southern region or who has relatives there.