Politics: Turkey sandwiches

By Richard North - February 13, 2023

One lesser-known aspect of the German blitz on Britain’s cities in 1940 was the chaotic nature of the government’s air raid shelter policy which left many urban populations fatally ill-prepared when the bombs started to fall.

One particularly egregious failure was the ambiguous wording of the official specification, issued on 29 April 1940, for the construction of so-called surface shelters. These were substantial brick-built structures, with a strong, reinforced concrete base and an equally strong, blast-proof roof built from the same material.

As was later explained (and in even more detail later on), at a time when there was a cement shortage, the impression was given that it was permissible to build the walls with lime rather than cement mortar.

As a result, shelters were constructed with perilously weak walls which, on being exposed to a bomb blast, would be blown out, leaving the substantial roof to come crashing down onto the base, crushing the unfortunate occupants between two heavy, concrete slabs.

In the gallows humour of the time, this type of shelter acquired a nickname from Herbert Morrison, the then home secretary responsible for shelter policy, becoming dubbed the Morrison Sandwich.

As we now gaze with mounting horror at the scenes of devastation in Turkey and Syria, following last week’s earthquakes, it is difficult to avoid the observation that many of the collapsed structures shared the fatal characteristics of Britain’s wartime shelters, with multiple floors built from reinforced concrete, separated by relatively weak wall panels and load-bearing columns.

Although this type of construction is common around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, it does not take a building expert to know that this particular combination is wholly inappropriate for earthquake prone areas, and the use has doubtless been partially responsible for the huge casualty rate being recorded.

Scandalously, as we are now learning, the prevalence of this type of building in Turkey owes less to ignorance and accident than it does to corruption, with the Sunday Times publishing a lengthy piece noting that the Turkish president has blamed the earthquake on fate and threatened those spreading “misinformation”, but his government has spent years waving through homes shoddily constructed by wealthy developers.

With the piece headed: “Erdogan’s builder cronies made their money – now they’ve fled”, it tells of how substandard construction practices have been permitted by the Erdogan government and its predecessors.

Thus we have the ST tell us that, while the scope of this quake is apocalyptic, the problem is structural, decades in the making. The construction boom during the Erdoğan years drove economic growth and became perhaps the most obvious symbol of what he called “the New Turkey”.

Since its foundation in 1923, we are told, modern Turkey has issued a “reconstruction pardon” window 23 times. More than a third of those have been issued since Erdogan took power, first as prime minister and then as president.

Huge numbers of illegally built, unlicensed structures have been pardoned by the state in return for paying a fee and filling out a form. The eye-watering efficiency of the Turkish bureaucracy has proved costly: more than 5,700 buildings collapsed last week, according to Turkey’s disaster agency.

Seven and a half million buildings benefited from the latest construction pardon, which was issued in 2018, shortly before the most recent presidential and parliamentary elections.

Turkish author, Kaya Genç – an essayist and novelist who is writing a history of Turkish literature for Harvard University Press – goes into uncommon detail about the nature of the problems.

One common malpractice, he writes, is the cutting off of load-bearing columns while constructing banks or shops in the entrance floors of residential buildings. Another is unregulated repairs that turn a safe building into an unsafe one.

According to 2020 data from the Environment and Urban Ministry, Genç says, about half of the buildings in Turkey were built in violation of seismic regulations.

But what is especially sinister is that speaking out against the malpractice has proved dangerous. Last year the government imprisoned two leading critics of its construction policies. Tayfun Kahraman, the executive board chairman of the Chamber of Urban Planners, and Ayse Mucella Yapici, an architect from the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, are serving 18-year sentences because of their opposition to development plans.

Of course, in an impoverished society, not everyone in Turkey is rich enough to afford structurally reinforced buildings. With annual inflation rising to a 25-year-high of 85 percent last October, many Turks cannot even afford housing.

But, Genç notes, even those affluent enough to afford supposedly quake-proof houses died in large numbers. In Hatay, the Renaissance residence, a 12-storey luxury building with 250 apartments, fell in what is termed a pancake collapse: an estimated 800 people are buried beneath the ruins. Not so much a Morrison’s sandwich as a Turkey sandwich.

Developers of such properties, who profited from the construction craze that paved the way for the intensity of this disaster, quickly took down their websites and vanished.

This development was picked up by the BBC which earlier reported on its website that 113 arrest warrants had been issued in connection with the construction of buildings that collapsed in Monday’s earthquake. Turkish police had taken at least 12 people into custody, including building contractors.

The story is picked up by the Telegraph which confirms that more than 100 people are under investigation, while state media reported that three people had been arrested, seven barred from leaving the country and seven others detained.

Vice President Fuat Oktay has promised a “meticulous” effort to charge builders who failed to abide by earthquake protection standards, amid allegations that thousands of homes failed to withstand the 7.8 magnitude quake because of “corruption and shoddy workmanship”.

This, though, is not the first time Turkey has been visited by such trauma. Elsewhere, we see reported that Erdoğan first came to power in 2002, propelled by two devastating earthquakes that killed about 18,000 people and injured some 50,000 in northwestern Turkey in 1999.

At the time, he promised to address corruption in the government and bolster earthquake preparedness in the country, much of which lies atop the active North Anatolian Fault.

The majority of the deaths in 1999 had occurred because buildings had been constructed in violation of building codes, the contractors skimped on quality in building materials for reasons of profit and public inspectors overlooked these violations for bribes and kickbacks.

Erdoğan had campaigned to put a stop to these practices. He managed to sway many frustrated voters, who punished the coalition parties that were governing Turkey at the time and cast their votes for Erdogan’s newly established Justice and Development Party (AKP).

However, in his two-decade rule, it is asserted that Erdoğan has only made it worse and failed to take necessary steps to prepare Turkey – a country that experiences hundreds of tremors every year registering higher than 4 on the Richter scale – for the more powerful earthquakes that have been predicted by experts.

Erdoğan, his family and his cronies in political and business establishments are said to have pocketed huge sums at the expense of the safety of citizens. The construction industry and government regulatory bodies have been largely complicit in the building of substandard housing for decades.

Builders and investors have managed to bribe officials from both the central government and local municipalities to allow them to ignore specifications for earthquake prevention. To maximize profits, they added more floors to the high-rise concrete buildings that have become the hallmark of Turkey’s urban landscape, increasing structural vulnerability and the possibility of compromise in the event of an earthquake.

Now, its people stricken by unimaginable horrors, the government has its begging bowl out, imploring the international community to come to its aid. And while humanity demands that every assistance should be afforded, it should never be forgotten that an untold number of deaths was entirely preventable, and stem from corrupt government and political failure.

For the UK too, there is a lesson. Corruption survives in a society, ultimately because people tolerate it. As we see our country slide down the slippery slope of deteriorating public standards, we are still at a stage where it is possible to speak out.

How far we go down that slope depends on the willingness of people to speak out, and the preparedness of the rest of us to listen and react. But, as Turkey is currently demonstrating, corruption can be fatal. We need no better reminder to know where we should draw the line.