Turkish president bragged about builders skirting earthquake construction codes in areas now turned to rubble, videos reveal
- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen boasting about removing building standards headaches for hundreds of thousands with his policy, local media reports
- At least 70,000 buildings in areas where last week’s devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck and killed some 37,000 people, used the policy, experts say
Resurfaced videos from 2019 show Turkey’s president boasting about granting amnesty for buildings that didn’t meet earthquake construction codes, according to local media.
The videos of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are circulating widely in Turkey as the death toll from this month’s devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake surpassed 37,000 people.
Erdogan is seen in the videos speaking on the campaign trail in 2019, boasting of having removed building standards-related headaches for hundreds of thousands of citizens with his amnesty policy.
One stop was in Kahramanmaraş, the recent earthquake’s epicentre. There, in 2019, he said: “We have solved the problems of 144,556 Kahramanmaraş citizens with the amnesty,” according to local outlet Duvar English.
Erdogan made similar boasts in campaign stops in the province of Hatay and the city of Malatya, both also now ravaged by the earthquake, Duvar reported. In Hatay, he said: “We have solved the problems of 205,000 citizens of Hatay with zoning peace,” according to a translation by NPR.