They accuse the president, ministers, governors and construction companies of intentional and negligent killing and abuse of office, as the criminal complaint shows. “As lawyers of this state, we cannot turn a blind eye to such injustice,” said attorney Pinar Akbina Karaman. 61 lawyers have signed so far.
In Turkey it is still being discussed how and whether the extent of the earthquake catastrophe could have been prevented. The Turkish opposition accuses the government, for example, of not having invested enough in the provision and earthquake safety of the buildings and of failing to respond to the crisis. Many buildings had collapsed as a result of the tremors.
Government denies allegations
The Turkish government dismisses such allegations as misinformation, among other things, and argues that any difficulties are due to the scale of the disaster.
Thousands of aftershocks
Meanwhile, thousands of aftershocks have been registered so far. According to the Turkish civil protection agency AFAD, more than 7,000 aftershocks were recorded. After two more strong earthquakes in the south-eastern Turkish province of Hatay on Tuesday evening, six deaths were reported from Turkey and five from Syria.
The authorities called on people not to return to their homes. Media reported that there were not enough tents in Hatay province and that many people still stayed in damaged houses. The civil protection authority has now announced that it had already delivered 6,000 more tents to the region during the night.
Allegations against civil protection authorities
The mayor of the municipality of Samandag, Refik Eryilmaz, said in an interview with journalist Cüneyt Özdemir published on YouTube on Tuesday that there was an urgent need for tents. Accordingly, 15,000 tents are necessary. Eryilmaz accused the civil protection agency AFAD of logistical errors.
Initially, no individual tents were distributed because a tent camp was to be set up. In addition, there is a lack of urgently needed sanitary facilities. AFAD recently started distributing tents. People are very angry and spend the nights outside in the cold, Eryilmaz said.
People in Syria panic
On the Syrian side, residents in the towns of Aleppo, Tartus and Hama panicked and jumped from their homes, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The activists reported 470 injured shortly after the new tremors, 320 of them in the government-controlled regions and 150 in the rebel areas. The head of the rescue NGO White Helmets, Raed al-Saleh, also reported 150 injuries for the Syrian regions held by rebels.
In Turkey, meanwhile, the number of deaths as a result of the earthquake rose to 42,310, as AFAD announced on Tuesday. Around 5,900 people have died in connection with the devastating earthquakes in Syria so far. The numbers are only updated irregularly – but it can be assumed that more than 48,000 people have died.
According to the UN, mountains of rubble are unprecedented
According to the United Nations, the earthquake was not only the worst in Turkish history in terms of fatalities. The mountains of rubble and rubble are also unprecedented, said Louisa Vinton, the representative of the UN Development Program (UNDP) in Turkey, on Tuesday at a UN briefing in Geneva.
In Turkey, the authorities have now inspected 70 percent of the 927,000 buildings affected. 118,000 of them collapsed or were so damaged that they had to be demolished.
Millions of tons of rubble and ash
The UNDP estimates the volume of rubble and ash to be between 116 and 210 million tonnes. To store that, an area of 30 by 30 square kilometers would have to be heaped up three meters high. According to Vinton, the last major earthquake in Turkey in 1999 left 13 million tons of debris and ash.
The United Nations fears the spread of disease. Among other things, they sent waste containers and disinfectants to the affected region in Turkey. Portable toilets are urgently needed. 1.5 million people have become homeless.
