Prosecutors have set up departments to investigate quake-related crimes in 10 provinces affected by the earthquake, on orders from the Ministry of Justice, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Sunday. 131 people were identified who were responsible for buildings that collapsed.
After at least 14 people have been in prison in southern Turkey since Saturday, another building contractor has been arrested. The DHA news agency reported on Sunday that he wanted to go to Georgia with a large amount of cash. The arrested are said to be responsible for construction defects that favored the collapse of the building. An arrest warrant was issued against 113 others.
According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, more than 1.5 million are now sheltering in tents, hotels or public emergency shelters. Turkish City Minister Murat Kurum said that almost 172,000 buildings in ten provinces have now been inspected. It was found that around 25,000 had been badly damaged or had to be demolished urgently. More arrests are expected.
Corruption and negligence of the authorities
The action is also seen by many as an attempt to divert attention from the overall blame for the disaster, the BBC reported on Sunday. The opposition sees President Erdogan as responsible and accuses him of failing to prepare the country for such an earthquake during his 20-year reign. In the upcoming elections in May, the catastrophe could play a decisive role in whether he can stay in office.
After the great earthquake in Turkey in 1999, which killed almost 18,000 people, the government tightened the building laws, but experts have been warning of the authorities’ oversights for years. Nusret Suna from the Chamber of Civil Engineers recently criticized that many old buildings had not been renovated to make them earthquake-proof, despite the relevant regulations. Even buildings built after 1999 are often not safe. This favored corruption and the negligence of the authorities. A blind eye was often turned to promote a construction boom – even in earthquake-prone regions.
Oya Özarslan from Turkey’s Transparency International organization, which deals with corruption, described similar problems. And the former chairman of the Chamber of Civil Engineers, Cemal Gökce, talked about the current practice: “A basic problem in Turkey is that illegal floors are placed on buildings built according to regulations without paying attention to regulations.” These problems did not first appear under Erdogan , says Gokce.
UN fears drastic increase in death toll
On Monday morning, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 shook the Turkish-Syrian border area, before another earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 followed at noon. According to the Turkish authorities, the tremors were unusually long at 65 and 45 seconds and therefore so destructive. Since then there have been more than 2,000 aftershocks in the region, according to the Turkish civil protection authority AFAD. The affected area extends over about 450 kilometers.
Race against time after earthquakes
More than 28,000 dead have already been officially reported almost a week after the earthquake on the Turkish-Syrian border. According to the UN, the numbers could more than double, especially in Syria. The emergency services continue to work in a race against time.
Meanwhile, the confirmed death toll has risen to more than 28,000. According to the authorities, 24,617 fatalities were recovered in Turkey by Saturday. At least 3,574 people died on the other side of the border in Syria, according to official figures. According to UN estimates, the death toll may rise to more than 50,000. UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths told Sky News during a visit to the earthquake region in Turkey that the number of victims would “double or more”.
26 million affected
The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes that 26 million people in Turkey and Syria could be affected by the disaster, including around five million people who are already considered to be particularly vulnerable. According to the UN, at least 870,000 people in both countries have to be provided with warm meals, and up to 5.3 million people could have become homeless in Syria alone.
According to AFAD, more than 32,000 people from Turkey are involved in search and rescue operations. There are also more than 8,200 international helpers – also from Austria. Despite dwindling hopes, the rescue workers still manage to save people alive from the rubble almost a week after the disaster.
Survivors rescued after almost a week
In Hatay province, after 140 hours, a pregnant woman and her brother and a seven-month-old baby were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building by rescue teams, Anadolu Ajansi reported. A 26-year-old man was rescued from the rubble of an 11-story building in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.
In Antakya, a five-month-old baby was retrieved alive from the rubble after 134 hours, reported the Turkish state television station TRT. TV pictures showed how a helper was lowered headlong into a meter-deep hole to get to the baby. The visibly exhausted child was handed over to paramedics after being freed.
According to the state news agency Anadolu Ajansi, a six-year-old boy who was buried under rubble for 137 hours was also rescued in Antakya. He was taken to a hospital. According to Ajansi, rescue workers in Iskenderun recovered a 44-year-old man from the rubble after 138 hours.
Security situation hinders helpers
Since Monday, there has been a lack of food, drinking water and functioning toilets in many places. Erdogan said a state of emergency had been declared in some parts of the country. People who looted markets or attacked shops should be punished more easily this way. However, anger and desperation also increased among the population at the fact that the official authorities’ relief efforts had started too slowly. There is said to have been rioting.
As a result, several rescue workers had to temporarily interrupt their mission – including the Austrian army. “There is increasing aggression between groups in Turkey. Shots are said to have been fired,” said Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Kugelweis of the APA. “At the moment, the Turkish army has taken over the protection of our contingent,” said Marcel Taschwer, spokesman for the defense ministry.
UN: ‘Abandoned people in Syria’
Meanwhile, the UN has acknowledged failures to help victims in the Syrian earthquake area. “We have failed the people of northwest Syria so far,” Griffiths wrote on Twitter on Sunday. These people feel they have been abandoned. “They are on the lookout for international aid that has not arrived.” It is his duty to have these errors corrected as soon as possible.
Northwest Syria, which was hit particularly hard by the earthquake, is controlled by various rebel groups. There is currently only one border crossing (Bab al-Hawa) through which the UN can deliver aid to areas not controlled by the government. The Syrian government wants humanitarian aid to flow entirely through the areas it controls.
As before, however, only sparse information is leaked to the outside world. Photos of activists raising the blue UN flag upside down over the hard-hit town of Djindiris made the rounds on social media over the weekend. The well-known Syrian opposition activist Usama Abu Said wrote that families of the victims would thus symbolically condemn the UN because they had not made it possible to help the victims.
risk of diseases
The risk of disease is now also increasing in the affected areas. According to the expert of the Emergency-WASH (Water Sanitation Hygiene) of the Austrian Red Cross, Georg Ecker, the water supply and disposal system in the earthquake area is severely affected. Therefore, people depend on surface waters – such as rivers or lakes – which in turn are polluted by feces because people have no sanitation due to the destroyed buildings.
In addition, groundwater systems could be shifted or interrupted, says Ecker. There is therefore also a risk of contamination of groundwater. If people have no alternative but to drink contaminated water, this can quickly lead to illness. There have been repeated outbreaks of cholera in Syria for a long time, and it could be that the situation worsens due to the poor hygiene conditions, or that there is a risk that cholera will also spread to Turkey due to the border area.
