Turkey has opened the first major trial linked to the construction of buildings that crumbled in two earthquakes last year that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
The hearing in the south-eastern city of Adiyaman involves 11 defendants accused of “conscious negligence” while overseeing the construction of the Isias hotel.
Five of the 11 defendants, including the hotel’s owner, have been arrested and charged with crimes that could see them jailed for more than 20 years each if found guilty.
The hotel’s collapse killed 24 children from Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus who had flown to Turkey to attend a students’ volleyball tournament.
They and a group of parents and chaperones died in what Turkish prosecutors now say was a tragedy that could have been averted had proper safety standards been met.
The building’s collapse claimed the lives of 72 people in all – 39 of them from northern Cyprus.
It was the single biggest tragedy in the history of northern Cyprus, whose self-rule is recognised only by Ankara.
The indictment says the building was illegally converted from a residence into a hotel in 2001, and that the hotel had illegally erected an additional floor to the nine permitted by the original plan.
The plaintiffs include the prime minister of northern Cyprus, Ünal Üstel.
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The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, emerged politically unscathed from the disaster, winning re-election months later.
He blamed the large death toll from the earthquakes, which killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey and nearly 6,000 people in Syria, on property developers who paid off local inspectors in order to use cheap building materials and illegally put up additional floors.
Turkish police arrested about 200 people over allegedly poor building construction immediately after the first 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck.
Erdoğan’s critics counter that most of Turkey’s main construction and real estate companies have formed a close relationship with the ruling AKP party during his 21-year rule.
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