Three years have passed since the February earthquakes. Although the authorities have repeatedly said that “the wounds will be healed” and “justice will be served,” almost none of those responsible have been effectively prosecuted, no one has resigned, and contractors who have stood trial have begun to be released one by one.
The 6 February earthquakes, which affected eleven provinces in Türkiye and Northern Kurdistan (Bakur), as well as Syria and Rojava, claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and impacted hundreds of thousands more. In the three years that have passed, most contractors put on trial in investigations carried out in Türkiye have been released, while many case files have been closed.
Naim Eminoglu, one of the lawyers of the Contemporary Lawyers Association (ÇHD) who has been closely following earthquake-related cases in many provinces, particularly Hatay and Maras, spoke to ANF about the stage the trials have reached.
Lawsuits filed as negligence to secure lower sentences
Eminoglu said prosecutors chose to frame the earthquake cases as causing death through conscious negligence, a choice that has led to short detention periods and early releases.He said, “In the offense of causing death through conscious negligence, low sentences are imposed. The earthquake case files are going badly at the moment. Unfortunately, Turkey has a bad practice in this regard. From the very beginning, prosecutors did not file the cases on the basis of probable intent; they filed them as conscious negligence. This directly affects the sentence that will be handed down.”
Eminoglu underlined that in cases filed based on probable intent, courts are required to issue separate sentences for each death, whereas in conscious negligence cases a collective sentence is imposed. He said, “In conscious negligence, the maximum sentence is 22.5 years. If the cases had been filed based on probable intent, there would have been a separate sentence for each person who died.”
Eminoglu also noted that the full sentences imposed are not actually served and that, due to various reductions, the effective time spent in prison decreases even further. He also said: “When a sentence of 22.5 years is given, the person spends approximately 5.5 years in a closed prison, followed by 2 years in an open prison. At the end of a total of 7 years, they are released. Moreover, the lawsuits appear as if they were prepared from a single center, under single instruction. Even though cases were filed in 11 different cities, almost all of them were filed as conscious negligence.”
Eminoglu said the only example filed on the basis of probable intent was the Alpargun Apartment case in Adana. In that case, he said, the court issued a sentence based on probable intent after receiving an additional defense, but the regional appellate court overturned the ruling. The local court then resisted the decision and again handed down a sentence based on probable intent, and the file is now once more at the appellate stage.
It was planned that they would never be jailed under the judicial package
Eminoglu said contractors were being protected in the earthquake case files and that, under the Eleventh Judicial Package, it had even been discussed that some defendants could walk free without ever spending a single day in prison. He said, “The regulation envisaged a six-year supervision period. By deducting three years in closed prison and three years in open prison, they would serve a very short time and be released. After public backlash, a step was taken back, but even now they remain in pretrial detention for a maximum of eight to nine months.”
He pointed to two separate case files handled on the same day at the Hatay Courthouse and said, “While the contractor of a building in which 60 people lost their lives was released, an arrest warrant was issued for a person on trial in a political case.”
Eminoglu said courts had disregarded lawyers’ demands to prosecute cases on the basis of probable intent, and that families had repeatedly met with the then Minister of Justice, yet no concrete steps had been taken.
He noted that contractors, in their defense, sought to shift the blame onto local administrations and claimed that they “did not know.” Eminoglu referred to the building regulation introduced in 1974 and said, “There is a regulation issued in Turkey in 1974. If that regulation had been followed, buildings might have suffered heavy damage, but people would not have died. The purpose of the regulation is not to prevent buildings from being damaged, but to prevent people from dying. Even this was not complied with.”
Eminoglu said the cases were either rushed to conclusion or left to drag on and stressed that the earthquake files needed to be brought to the public agenda far more strongly.
He added that public officials were not being effectively put on trial in the proceedings, that token investigations had been opened but not pursued, and that although permission had been obtained from the Ministry of Interior to file a case against the mayor in Hatay, the prosecutor’s office had left the file waiting without taking further action.
Families of earthquake victims were unable to join the cases
Eminoglu said there were serious uncertainties regarding those who went missing after the earthquakes and that the bodies of many people could not be recovered. He said fires broke out at the Ronesans Residence in Hatay and in some buildings in Maras, and that people lost their lives after burning for days under the rubble, with some cases in which even DNA identification could not be carried out.
Eminoglu said, “They have no graves and no bodies, and for this reason they are unable to take part in the trials.” He added that the state had officially reported one thousand missing people, but that it remained unclear whether migrants were included in this figure.
Eminoglu said people whose relatives could not be identified were buried in public cemeteries and added: “This most likely also applied to refugees. The state announces an overall number, but many of those who died did not even have citizenship.” He stressed that no transparent information had been provided about the fate of those who went missing in the earthquake.
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